A sweet little "post immortality" tale for your Sunday.
All ideas are my own, but the characters are not. Enjoy. Xx
Good Morning,
I can smell the morning salt air, even from down here.
The salt air and him, down in this small little cabin bed.
I haven't opened my eyes yet, but I can tell it's early.
The sun is bright peaking through the little port hole, and I can vaguely hear some marina seagulls on deck. They're likely feasting on the morning fish catching water bugs on the surface.
He offered to find a hotel once we arrived back to the San Diego harbour after our little sunset cruise, but I said no. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe once we get to San Fransisco.. but not last night.
Last night..
My God.
I can feel the slight sway of the water underneath us, and my trained ear can hear the gentle laps of the waves against the side of Ishmael and the clangs of the pulley systems up top.
I can also hear his breathing.
Heavy, rhythmic.
I can't believe it used to bug me.
Maybe it will again, one day, years from now.
In this moment though, the sound of his deep, unhurried, slightly raspy breath is one of the greatest comforts I have ever known.
It's home.
A familiar sound from our early days in my apartment, or in our eventual shared condo.
His sleepy breathing beside me.
He's deep in his sleep, too. I can tell by his breath.
I'd always envied him for that.
For someone who was never late to a scene, never missed a work page no matter what time of the day or night, he was a surprisingly deep sleeper.
I smile as I roll over in the small double bed, barely enough room to move under his heavy arm and against the wall of the cabin, and open my eyes to look at him.
He's older now, obviously.
So am I.
I'm sure he's noticed the difference... but if he did, he didn't say so.
Gil, though, is wearing his age a lot more than I remember. His hair is whiter and his skin darker.
It's probably from the sun, being out on the water. Goodness knows the man never wore sunscreen in the Vegas sun or in the middle of the rainforest, and likely didn't start in the last few years.
In his sleep though, he looks more youthful. He looks more like the Gilbert that I woke up to that first morning we spent together. The morning after we found Nick. God, it's hard to believe that was ten years ago now.
There was more room in my bed that time, albeit.
Much more.. and we used every inch of it well, I remember fondly with a smile.
I always imagine when I am sleeping my face is screwed up in a permanent grimace from years of night terrors and restless slumber. Gil, though, looks almost childlike. Angelic. Peaceful.
He once told me he doesn't really dream, which, as someone who dreams almost nightly, was shocking for me to hear.
I'm not surprised, though.
His brain is always working in circles around the rest of ours', so it's no wonder it needs a break every now and then. Time to be empty.
The only time I have seen him startle awake from a dream was about three nights after I came home from the hospital after the Natalie Davis desert thing. He told me he hadn't slept a full night since I'd been taken, but I hadn't noticed once I came home because I had been taking heavy duty sleeping pills with my pain meds. I had slept right through them. I felt terrible, nauseated even, and poured the rest of the bottle into the garbage that next morning.
His nightmares managed to subside as quickly as they came.
Mine, however, not so much.. but I don't like to rehash what transpired in the months following that whole ordeal. Neither of us do.
No, when Gil sleeps, like he is right now, his fine lines even out almost completely. His face softens, and his lips always part ever so slightly. That slight gap between his two dry pink lips is where the deep breathing sounds stem from. If I inched closer, I could kiss his lips shut and silence him.
I'll admit, I have done that before.
Looking at him now, I can't help but feel the familiar flutter in my abdomen that creeps up to my heart, and I cannot contain the smile on my face.
He's beautiful.
He always has been, to me. Since that day I first met him in San Fransisco.
His talk, which I'll never actually admit was in fact, a little dull, still captivated me. Not as much though, as his piercing blue eyes and that simple, crooked smile of his. Don't even get me started on his dark brown, slightly greying curls - I must have spent 80% of his talk imagining what they would feel like between my long finger tips. Even his awkward and quirky little hand movements, the way he nervously flexed his fingers by his sides, as if he were trying to grasp for the right things to say.. it was all so endearing. I was infatuated from the minute I laid eyes on him.
Dare I say it, he penetrated my soul that day and I have never recovered since. Clearly, because I'm still here almost twenty years later, laying naked next to him and staring at him in awe.
He's infuriating.
I've spent almost as much time hating him as I have loving him.
We've never had a... traditional... relationship, but he is beautiful. He makes me feel beautiful.
His words and his mind are beautiful.
The way he can make even the most repulsive of insects or situations seem fascinating is beautiful.
I gently raise the hand that isn't pinned underneath me, and brush my thumb along his cheek bone. It's been so long since I have been able to do that.
He stirs.
Maybe not in as deep of a sleep as I had thought.. or maybe it's just been so long since someone's touched him that the feeling startled him awake.
I smile cheekily as he blinks his sleepy eyes and then opens them directly into mine. My hand is still on his face, and he smiles.
"Chalk," I try to shrug, knowingly.
His smile widens.
"Mm." He nods and plays along with it before he closes the very small space between us with a gentle kiss.
He's still timid, I can tell. Even after yesterday and last night.. I can tell he's playing it safe but my God, I've missed his lips.
I can feel his natural morning response against my naked leg, though, and he knows I can. I can tell by the grin on his face as he inches it closer to my skin.
"Good morning to you too." I smile, my voice thick.
"How did you sleep?" He quirks, his own morning voice equally as thick and raspy.
"Not bad. This bed is more comfortable than I had anticipated, actually."
"Well, travelling and the sea air will knock you out too, even just an hour's sail like yesterday.. so it's not so much a matter of true comfort as it is your body's desperation for rest. Makes it seem more comfortable than it actually is. A hotel bed would have been much nicer.. more room, too." he grimaces as he tries to stretch himself out a little more alongside my lithe body.
I purse my lips, stubbornly.
"Let me book a room tonight." He smiles boyishly, "Just one night. Then we can live out your warped cramped-space fantasy until we get back to the Bay."
"I always have had a thing for small spaces.." I tease with a wink, and get a playful glare on return. "Ok. One night."
"Good." He nods, and kisses me again. "We can get you some clothes, too."
I nod, "How did you sleep?"
He sighs, and then returns his arm to my hip, drawing me in closer, "Best sleep I've had in about four years."
"Has it really been that long?" I ask, my voice filled with sadness.
"Between missed calls and flights.. and then the divorce, it's been about three years and nine months. Almost ten." He answers, as his finger tips trace along the filled out line of my hipbone. He's probably noticed the extra weight I'm carrying, but again, if he has he hasn't mentioned it.
I grumble at our own stupidity and bury my head into the single pillow we had shared. It smells of him, and it's wonderfully overpowering.
"It's my fault, Sara.." he begins, quietly, with a pained sigh. We still haven't really talked about this since I showed up yesterday evening, but of course we haven't. Communication has clearly never been our forte.
"No, it's not. It was both of us." I shake my head as I lift my gaze back to his face, "We've both always been selfish and stubborn and overly independent. Neither of us were willing to budge.. and you were right, all those years ago.. a relationship in stasis withers."
He nods, sadly.
"I'll come back to Vegas, Sara. If that's where you're happy, if that's where you want to be.. being back wasn't so bad.. and it might be nice to see you in that badge again." The sincerity in his voice quickly morphs into something much more delicious and tempting as I catch the glint of lust his eyes.
"No." I sit up on my elbow, smiling devilishly, making sure he hears the seriousness in my voice, "I told you. I resigned. And Vegas has never been where I'm happy, Gil. I've just always been happy wherever you are. San Fransisco, Vegas, Costa Rica, Paris... it doesn't matter."
He raises a questioning eyebrow, "In the bowels of a sailboat docked in San Diego?"
"I'll admit, we could invest in a bigger mattress." I grin and purse my lips with a half smile, "But yes. Wherever. I don't care, Gil."
I can see from the look in his eyes he doesn't quite believe me, but he doesn't question any further for the time being. Instead he lowers me back down to the pillow and draws me in for a deep and passionate kiss.
He may not be good at communicating, I suppose neither am I, and he may not be good at the emotions.. but if Gil Grissom excels at one thing when it comes to romance, it's kissing.
His lips are softer than butter and surprisingly more cushiony than you would expect. He knows exactly how to use them, and how to incorporate his delicious tongue in the most intimate of ways. He's not sloppy, and he's certainly not overly and unpleasantly aggressive.
In fact, this kiss reminds me a lot of our first kiss back in my apartment, after we had worked a case at a mental institution.
We had both had a rough shift, and despite my insistence that I was fine, he demanded he drive me home. The rain still hadn't subsided, it only seemed to be worse by the time we got off shift, and I could tell he was still on edge from the situation in the staff pod with Adam Trent.
He had parked in one of the visitor's spots out front of my complex, turned off the vehicle, and held onto the steering wheel with a flexing white knuckled grip. I could practically feel the tension radiating off of him, and I knew he had something he needed to say, but needed time to figure out exactly how to say it.
So I did what I promised my PEAP councillor I wouldn't do, and I invited him up to my flat for coffee... a shred of hope and excitement stirring in my lower belly in a dangerously delicious way.
I had told her I would stop trying so hard.
Stop expecting so much.
Stop handing him opportunities to break my heart on a damned silver platter.
But this situation had been different... and there was literally nothing left to do but try and hope, desperately hope, he was going to figure it out.
Sure enough and to my genuine surprise, he agreed.
He followed me up the harshly lit fluorescent stairway and down the hallway until we made it to my apartment.
He had been there before, of course, but it felt so much heavier and at the time I couldn't understand why.
I remember I had unlocked the door, and ushered him into my dark apartment before closing the door behind us. Nothing but the sound of my air conditioner and the pelting rain outside filled the void, and before I could even turn on my entrance light, I felt his gentle finger tips on my neck where Adam had earlier pressed that pottery handle. His touch made me flinch, but he didn't back away.
I could barely see him in the darkness, and I think that's what gave him the confidence he needed to push himself over the edge. The edge we had been dangling on for months now.
His thumb ran over the tender spot for a few more moments before his weary and raspy voice choked out my name.
I had never heard his voice sound so pained, so desperate, before in my entire life. The usually composed and emotionless man I knew was all of a sudden reduced to a trembling, quivering voice:
"Sara.."
I swallowed hard.
"It's just me, Gil." My voice squeaked, barely a whisper, trying to reassure him that the next step, the one we both so clearly wanted and needed to take, was safe and ok, he just needed to do it.
I stepped a little closer to him and before I could even inhale the scent of him in this new proximity, his lips were on mine with more passion than I could have ever expected.
It wasn't a nervous first kiss.
There was no timid 'testing the waters' moment. It was completely and utterly breathtaking and was a clear indication that every pent up emotion and attraction I had held inside for the last seven years of knowing him was, in fact, reciprocated.
We wouldn't fully consummate our physical relationship for another few weeks after that, but my God, if mouths could make love.. that's exactly what ours were doing that Sunday evening.
His lips now are pouring the same amount of pent up passion and emotion into me like they did all those years ago.
We kissed and made love last night, sure, and it was incredible as always. It's always good with Gil, even in our lowest lows before the divorce when we both knew things weren't right, something wasn't working,.. the sex was always good.
Last night was much like our first encounters after being reunited in Paris after several weeks apart that first year back in Vegas, though. Hasty, needy, to fulfil a deep primal and physical human desire. I mean, neither of us had had sex in apparently three years and nine months. There was a deeply desperate element to it. It didn't last long for either of us, of course, because it had been so long.. but it was still wonderful.
This, now, though, is so much more.
This is the love.
The tenderness.
This is us. What I loved so damn much about being with him.
His lips are so attentive, and his hands begin to multitask in that delicious way they always could.
They quickly find my rib cage, an odd fascination of his, and I can feel as he drags his finger tips along each one as if he's counting them. As he always used to, after making his way down and touching each rib, his palm comes back up to my breast and cups it ever so gently. A perfect fit.
He massages it softly as his thumb and pointer finger twist my nipple, his lips never breaking from their work on mine.
I hear myself involuntary moan into his mouth and he swallows the sound gratefully, and I feel his lips creep into a smile.
Cheeky bastard.
After a moment at my breast, his hand begins it's decent down to my most intimate of anatomy, and within seconds my world implodes into a glorious display of lights and colours behind my eyelids.
Always the gentleman.
Always making sure I am taken care of at least once before he gets his.
He knows too, from experience, that by bringing me to a climax with his fingers before he penetrates me he is essentially guaranteeing a second more powerful orgasm once he is inside.
And he calls me the vixen.
He's the one who, despite the years of solitude and the workaholic facade, had always been the real animal in our sex life.
Surprising, right?
I like sex. I have always liked sex, and I like to think I have always had a very healthy and exploratory sex life. I'm not opposed to much, either.. I'm not a prude, I'm pretty open minded.
But Gil, he's a whole other story.
It genuinely shocked me, too, once we finally ignited that flame between us.
For a man who was 15 years my senior, he sure didn't have any issues in that department.. in fact, he may have even had more of a libido than I did at first. Most men are good for one, sometimes two rounds of sex in an evening.. with a generous recovery time between the two, at that. I think our record for an evening was five. It was a long evening, sure, but still. Five. And that's still just counting the times he actually entered me. There were other... well, you get the idea.
On top of his libido, too, he knows what he's doing.
I asked him once, how he was just so good at it... and his response was the most 'Grissom' thing he could have ever said:
"I don't know... I suppose..." he shrugged, all nonchalant, "I suppose I've just always been an observer. I can read your responses and change my methods accordingly. I like a challenge... and I like the reward even better."
He clearly hasn't lost his touch the last three years and nine, almost ten, months. He still knows exactly what he's doing.
After my trembling subsides, his damp fingers glide back up to my face and he cups my jaw with a tenderness I forgot I could feel, as he shifts his body fully over top of mine.
"Sara?" He mumbles into my lips, before he releases me and looks into my eyes with deep emotion.
My response is a squint of my eyes.
"I love you." He whispers as his deep blue eyes search my face for a moment. It's the first time he's said those three words in a long time... and I can't help the tears that instantly flood my vision.
I knew coming to him, chasing after him, would be emotional... but I didn't account for how emotional I would be at our reunion. A few escape my eyes and roll down my temple as he smiles and kisses them away.
"I love you." I nod, and I'm surprised at the crack in my own voice. "I love you so much, Gil."
When he enters me, it's like the first time, and both of us gasp our pleasure simultaneously.
Last night was good, great even...
But this is the love.
He pauses for a moment to breathe and compose himself and feel my walls relax and sink around him, and I'm thankful for the moment of steadiness. Even after years of intimacy with him, and even after last night's activities, my body needs time to adjust to his size. I'm a little out of practise, and he's a little bigger than my toys back in Las Vegas.
For a quiet and humble man, he is incredibly well endowed and you'd never know it until you felt him inside you.
The sharp pain of pleasure rushes through me as I breathe him in, and his lips find my neck tenderly.
"You ok?" His raspy voice shakes against my pulse. I can tell he is exercising every last inch of self control not to thrust and move too soon. I know even after years of shared intimacy, he is terrified of hurting me.
"Yeah." I reply breathily, nodding my head so he can feel my reassurance and I reach my hands around to cup his butt-cheeks. I raise my legs and wrap them around his thighs to pull him into me even deeper and he groans. It's a silent way of communicating that he can move, he won't hurt me.
So he does.
He exhales his relief and slowly pulls out half way, and pushes himself back in. Again, we both echo each other's moans of pleasure and love.
We find a rhythm, not unlike the sensual rhythm we used to practise together often, and our hands busy themselves with light touches and caresses. My hands in his hair, on his neck, my nails scraping down his tacky back.
His hands come to their favourite spots as well. His left finds my hipbone and massages and pushes for a gentle leverage, and his right finds my neck with an equally tender squeeze.
I can hear my own gasps and moans escape my lips, and feel the rumble of his pleasure throughout his spine and when he lowers his mouth back down to mine I gratefully swallow his sensual words,
"My God, Sara," he moans into my mouth, and now it's my turn to smile into his lips. I can be cheeky too.
I can tell he is close by his staggered breath and by the tension in his shoulders, so I reach my right hand down between us to rub myself.
It's something I learned early on that turns him on to no end and sends him over the edge almost every time.
As soon as my fingers work in a circular motion and the tips of them brush past him as he thrusts, I feel his rhythm and pace increase in desperation.
Again, he gasps my name as if to warn me, "Sara, darling.."
"Come, Gil." I whisper in his ear and his hands tighten their grip and his body tenses.
His release is powerful and loud and mine follows seconds after his, equally as moving and vocal.
His hips slow to a gentle sway as we ride out the afterglow of our climaxes and he lowers his tacky chest to mine.
I can feel his heart beating heavily in his chest, and once again the tears threaten to spill from my eyes. Instead, I chuckle involuntary, and whisper,
"We've still got it."
He laughs, too, and kisses my temple.
"We do." He breathes, and rolls to the side, "I've missed this."
"You've missed sex." I tease, and he knows as much, and quirks his lips into a grin.
"I've missed you."
I purse my lips, and curl up beside him, my fingers trailing along his chest and through his fine hairs. I can feel him thinking, and glance up at his face.
"You're certain you want to stay? With me?" He whispers, as if he knew I was waiting for him to speak his mind, and looks down at me. His blue eyes are full of uncertainty and doubt.
With a sigh, I prop myself back up on my elbow to gaze at him.
My god, I love him.
"I should have stayed five years ago in Paris, Gil. I never should have left." I nod softly, "I'm certain."
He exhales a breath I didn't realize he had been holding, and I watch as his eyes moisten. "I meant what I said to Heather.." he squints, "You're my best friend, Sara."
I simply nod again, and cup his cheek with my hand before I bring my lips down to meet his gently and whisper, "I love you."
End