A big thanks to WalkerTRngr for beta reading for me!

Thank you for all the reviews!

I'm on my way. The text told Grissom. Sara was supposed to have breakfast with Greg this morning to start writing the paper. She told him she'd come over afterwords. He hadn't expected her for at least another hour or two.

When she walked in, she pet Hank, and gave Grissom a "Hey." As she started digging through the contents of his coffee table.

He watched her, noting her agitation. "You're early."

"I canceled." She told him. She moved to the table. "I couldn't find my notes." She let out a deep breath as she seemed to locate what she was looking for. "I told him I probably left them in my locker. I'm meeting him tomorrow." She walked over and shoved her notes into her bag, and let out a sigh. He watched her grab the table, close her eyes, and take a few breaths.

"Are you okay?"

She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Yeah. Just tired. Can we just go to bed?"

He nodded, "Sure."

Three days later…

Sara was running around his place, half dressed. While rather amused and aroused by the sight, he kept his thoughts to himself as he lounged in the bed because she appeared to be agitated. He'd just gotten off work, and Sara was expected at the courthouse in an hour.

"Do you know where my blue suit is? The one I left here?"

Grissom opened his mouth and paused. Oh no. "I took it to the dry cleaners with my suit. I haven't been able to pick it up yet."

She froze and muttered, "fuck." Under her breath, and checked her watch. "I got to go." She shoved a pair of pants on, slipped on her sandals. "I'll have just enough time to get home." And tore out of the room without another word.

Grissom heard the door open and shut, followed by the garage door rising and falling. Hank turned to look at him and whined. As he got up to lock the doors before sleeping, he said, "I know, buddy. She didn't say goodbye to me either."

Hank let out another whine.

As the days continued to go by, Grissom had this increasing feeling that Sara was mad at him, but didn't want to ask what was wrong. He thought things were going well. So much so that his worries four months ago seemed to fall away, and she was staying at his place most nights for about a month. He enjoyed having her here with him. Waking up next to her, falling asleep with her, sitting in the afternoon together drinking coffee and talking. His previous nightmares over the summer seemed to taper off finally as well.

They even started doing the crosswords together. She'd be on the other side of the room and he would call out, "Five letter word for genetic duplicate." Even if he knew the answer, sometimes he'd ask just to see what she'd say.

She would answer back, "Clone."

So he let it ride and let her come to him. Completely ignoring that up until this point, that hasn't worked out too well for them.

It was several hours into a shift spent mostly on paperwork. He and Sara were going over notes on a case that was going for the preliminary hearing. Grissom just asked her if she wanted him to pick up something for them to eat on the way home when the call came in about two four-nineteens. He assigned Catherine and Nick to one, and took Warrick, Greg, and Sara with him to other.

When they arrived at their case, they found two apparently young, half-naked women huddled together, and one guy fully clothed in the garage. Warrick speculated that something must have been wrong with the guy if he was in his garage working on his bike instead of partying with two hot chicks. Grissom responded by saying, "Maybe he wasn't invited."

Later they realized Ahren, had slept with both women—but separately. Which was good, because one was Ahren's girlfriend, Bianca, and the other was her mother, Chelsea. All three had drugs in their system. They continued to work the case, and maybe if Grissom spent more time with Sara throughout the case, he might have noticed how angry she was with him.

It was pretty clear something was up early in the investigation. Bianca had a tendency of meeting men, them moving in with her right away, and then the men just leaving without a word. Or this time, dying. They tracked down a previous boyfriend who told them someone had shot him and he was told to leave Bianca. So he did. Eventually, it led them to a telephone service repair man named Tom Harper. He told them he serviced the place recently, but it was clear he was lying.

During all this, the case he sent Nick out too, lead to Kelly Gordon. The woman that was murdered was also involved in Nick's kidnapping. Grissom called Nick to his office and asked him if it would be a problem. What he really needed was to gage how well he was handling it. The overall impression he got was that Nick was more angry at him for withholding that they found the tape. But he was trying to protect Nick, and refused to apologize for that.

He, Warrick, and Sara were in the layout room with the phone records on a board, going over what they knew and Sara started by saying, "There were two different inks on the work order, which means the date on the work order was compromised. Tom Harper made a service call to Bianca's house not in December, but ten months earlier, in February."

Warrick asked, "Why would the guy lie?"

"It appears that he was a lot more to her than just the phone guy. Our bachelorette was a very busy girl." Sara turned to point at the phone logs. "Phone calls from Bianca to Tom are in yellow, from Bianca to Justin are in blue, and from Bianca to Ahren are in pink. There was always overlap. Bachelor number one: Tom, phone guy, strong showing from February 18 until June-ish. She called him two, three times a day. And then around June 5, bachelor number two enters the picture, Justin. Ten days of overlap and then all the calls to Tom stopped until …"

"The week Justin was shot and moved out." Grissom pointed out.

"Exactly. Ahren entered the picture about five days later in mid- September. At that point, all the phone calls to the other guys stopped until just about a week ago."

"When she started calling Tom again." Grissom added as he looked at the record.

"Every time this chick calls Tom, somebody gets shot." Warrick pointed out.

"It's like thermite." Grissom stated.

Sara looked at him confused, "Thermite?"

Grissom actually thought, her being a physics major, she would like this analogy. "When you combine two seemingly harmless elements, aluminum and rust, press them together, add heat ... it creates an explosion so hot it'll burn through steel. Powerful but uncontrollable. It burns and burns until it burns itself out, finally consuming both elements."

"I guess some people just shouldn't be together." Sara deadpanned, looking at him.

Grissom froze, completely confused. What?

Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened. She turned and walked out without a word. Grissom just stood there, his whole body feeling cold.

It was Warrick that broke the silence as he pulled the records off the board. "I don't know what you two are fighting about now, but you better fix it. I don't want to walk up to her and see her filling out another leave of absence form." Warrick gave him a pointed look and walked out of the room.

Grissom just stood there. How was he supposed to fix what he didn't know what he did wrong? His phone dinged. He pulled it out; it was a text from Sara.

Sorry, I didn't mean that the way it came out.

He started feeling warm again. He texted back. But you have been angry with me?

He was in his office when his phone dinged a minute later. frustrated, but not angry. Can we talk later? Can I come over?

He felt a little better, You know you can.

Two hours later, Sara walked into his office and gave him a reassuring smile. She sat down in the chair with a file in her arms. "I really am sorry." And Grissom noticed her outburst must have cooled her anger.

"It's okay. We'll talk about it later."

She nodded and opened her file. "So it wasn't Bianca calling Tom. It was her mother."

He tilted his head, "Really?"

"Yes. It would appear that mommy dearest is jealous of her daughter's youth and attention. When Tom was being interviewed, he said that he and her mother wouldn't always be around to protect her."

"Well then, I think we need to talk to her again."

"She's already on her way in. And Warrick is waiting to interview her."

He smiled as they got up and left. "I'll drive." It occurred to Grissom, as they got into the Denali, he was the only one Sara would let drive for her.

Chelsea confessed to working with Tom to scare away her boyfriends, but to only scare them away, not kill them. It didn't matter. She was still culpable.

He'd left work and picked up Hank, with Sara shortly behind him so they could talk, when the call came in that Kelly confessed to murder and committed suicide. Sofia called him while he was still in his car, told him she and Catherine were taking Nick out to eat to talk. Grissom declined. He knew he and Sara needed to talk.

When she walked into the door, Grissom already had a glass of wine poured for each of them.

"You know about Nick's case?" She asked as she walked in and pet Hank.

He nodded. "They invited me out to with him. I declined."

She took a breath. "So did I." She took the wine when he offered it.

She sat at the bar stool while he remained standing, and he waited for her to talk about what was floating around her mind.

She sighed, "Gil, I'm not mad at you, and I didn't mean what I said. I just… its just… I feel…" She took another drink and sighed. "I feel like you want me here all the time. That you want me to move in, but you don't say so." She swallowed. "So… so instead, I'm living in limbo. Most nights we're here, never at my place anymore. Which is fine because of Hank, except… when I am at my apartment, I'm looking for things that I need, and there here. When I'm here, I need things at my apartment. I'm just… I feel like I'm living between two places. There is also the fact that the last time I was home, I opened the fridge, and saw everything was rotten."

Grissom stared at her, his hand on his glass he hadn't drunk from yet. He thought about his previous behavior since Christmas. The desire to have her here all the time, the fact he kept telling her to bring things over and leave them. His frustration at her being home for a few days just a couple of weeks ago.

He sighed, "You're right. I want you to move in." He stated clearly.

Sara stared at him blankly, "What?"

He gave her a half smile even though his heart was beating out of his chest, "Move in."

She blinked, "Are you sure?"

Part of him was panicking, but ultimately he knew she was right. He couldn't expect her to keep going like this, "Yes."

They both took a long drink from their glasses. "We need to think of the logistics. No one can know I'm living with you."

"No one stops by." At least they hadn't in a while.

"What about HR? I can't exactly put down that I moved in with you." She told him.

He shrugged, "You can do a forwarding address at the post office."

Sara looked at him as if he lost his mind, but to him it was so simple. As she pointed out, sometime in the past month, she started living here anyway.

"I.. uh.. I need to talk to the apartment manager and look at my lease to see when it's up." Was her response, but she kept her tone even and collected.

"Are you saying yes?" He asked, feeling odd that she seemed so…. detached.

Her voice was barely audible, "Yes."

When they woke up that afternoon, neither of them talk about it. Grissom figured the conversation was tabled until Sara reviewed her lease and talked to her landlord. She went to her own apartment after their shift, and as the days went by, he was surprised that Sara never brought it up again. Still, he expected, over the next few days, more of her things would migrate to his place. But the only thing that made its way over, was a few more clothes.

Though, to be honest over the next week, he didn't really notice. Between working a high profile case at a party hosted by Lois O'Neal, with several attendees with the Governor's personal phone number and dealing with Catherine having the cops pull over her father so she could have a conversation with him instead of talking to him like a normal person—they'd been busy. It wasn't till the dust settled that he'd noticed over the week that Sara had moved nothing over, talked about her lease, or brought up moving in, at all.

They were sitting at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee, and reading when he asked, "Have you talked to your landlord?"

She didn't look up from the copy of Moby Dick he bought her for Christmas. "Hmm?" She took a sip of her coffee.

He looked up from Lois O'Neal's book and watched Sara, "Your landlord?"

She shook her head but didn't stop reading, "Haven't had time yet."

He took a sip of his own coffee. "If after every shift, we go over and take a box or two, we'll probably have you moved in with a few weeks."

"Hmmhmm. That's works."

He narrowed his eyes, "Sara?"

"Yes, dear?"

He sighed, "Sara."

She looked up from the book and at him, "What?"

He frowned, trying to gather his thoughts and not assume anything. Maybe that was the problem. When he asked her to move in after she called him on his behavior, he'd assumed she brought it up because she wanted to move in with him. Maybe she didn't. Or maybe she was upset because he didn't offer to move in with her. His place just seemed more logical for them. He owned it outright, and it was bigger. Whereas she was paying rent.

"Do you not want to move in here?"

She pursed her lips, "No… I do."

He raised his eyebrow. "Then why do I feel you're not that enthusiastic about the idea?"

She bit her lip, something she wasn't prone to do. "Its just. I put you on the spot last week and then you asked me to move in with you without thinking about it and… well…. I just wanted to give you time to think about it… and well…"

His mouth formed an 'o', his tone softened, "You were giving me time to change me mind."

She fidgeted in her seat. "It's just, a few months ago, you panicked just because Warrick got married. I didn't want to start moving my things in, and you see me taking up space and get… nervous. I just wanted to make sure this is what you really want."

He sighed and reached over to grab her hand. "I get it. And I really want you to move in."

Sara smiled, "Well okay then." She leaned in and kissed him on the corner of his mouth, "I'll call him right now." She picked up her phone and put her book down.

Grissom listened in as the landlord told Sara she had six months left of her lease. She could break it, lose her security deposit and last month's rent, plus pay a penalty of two months rent, or find someone to sublet. She told him she would think about it.

Over the next week, he and Sara worked on their days off and after shift to bring over her things. And just as Sara expected, he panicked. He thought he was fine, he really did. Then her books started migrating into his shelves, her clothes in boxes took up space in his closet till they brought her dresser over, and her knick knacks and clutter started taking up space while his things were getting shuffled and moved and shifted to make room. Her desk and her workbench stood in the middle of the entryway, having not yet found a place.

His space felt smaller, like it was closing in on him. Moving her in somehow seemed so simple. She would move over her clothes, books, and decorative things, and that would be it. He already had a house full of furniture, so they didn't need hers… right? Logically, he knew that's not how it worked, but now that he saw their lives merging, he started questioning whether his space was big enough for the two of them. The door opened and Sara walked in with Hank, who immediately ran right into her desk in the entryway. Grissom corrected himself. Was his townhouse big enough for him, Sara, and their dog? Their dog. He blinked a few times and forced himself to breathe. Hank looked at him and whined.

Sara frowned at Hank, and the table, then looked at Grissom. "We're going to have to decide what of my furniture is coming over and what of yours will go into storage." She looked at her desk again.

When Grissom said nothing, she looked back at him. He didn't know what she saw on his face, but she said, "Breathe Gil." Her mouth twitched. "If this is going to work, to be us together here, it has to be some of both of us."

He looked at her, a little wide eyed. "I know.. it's just… I think this place is too small for the three of us." She still had so much over at her place. Her bedroom was mostly untouched so far. He gestured around them. Maybe it was the panic, maybe it was all the clutter, and he suddenly understood what it felt like to be a hoarder, but he turned back to her, "I think we need a bigger place." He squawked out.

His heart constricted, and he dropped onto his couch. He bought this place when he was thirty. This was his domain, his sanctuary. It was his place. His.

Sara suddenly appeared in front of him and knelt in front of him. She grabbed his hands gently, her eyes full of understanding. She gave him a small smile. "Maybe that isn't such a bad idea. We can look for a place that is bigger, fits both our needs, and in the meantime, I'll keep my place. That way we can slowly work at both of us going through all our things." She'd put a good deal of emphasis on the word 'slowly.' "Deciding what we want to keep, what we want to get rid of, and gradually working on creating a new space that fits both of us."

Grissom just stared at her. How did she know me so well? How did I get this lucky? The pain eased up in his heart and he could breathe again. "Sounds like a great idea." He smiled as he pulled her up to kiss her. They wrapped their arms around each other and just held each other for a long moment. Each second that passed, he felt his anxiety lesson. Silently, he sent out a prayer to God, thanking him for sending him someone who understood him so perfectly.

A few days later, while sitting and drinking their coffee, Grissom suggested, "Since I'm off tonight. If you're comfortable letting me look at your finances, I can pull everything together and see what we can afford."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sara's cup pause on the way to her mouth.

"If you're not, it's okay. We can wait until we can sit together." He added, trying not to be hurt that she might not trust him with this. As her boss, he already knew what she made, but after he shifted through everything he knew about her, the place in Frisco, that she used to or maybe still had a trust; he suspected she had more money than she let on.

"No… no it's fine. I trust you. I'm just not used to… sharing certain things about myself."

Grissom was about to tell her he'd wait if she was uncomfortable, but she stood up and went to get her laptop. "Here. All my banking stuff is bookmarked." She took a pad sitting on the counter and grabbed a pen, "Here are my passwords."

Grissom stared at her, surprised by the sheer trust she had in him. He knew people who were married for decades who wouldn't share computer passwords, let alone banking information.

She smirked at him. "Besides, if you try to steal all my money, I know where you live." She winked at him.

He grinned, "I'll keep that in mind, and remember to be on the run before you get home." Home. They were buying a home. Together.

She laughed.

God, he loved her. The smile faded from his face, but he watched her as a floating sensation took over him. He loved her. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but somehow it was. He loved her. So much.

Her smile fell and her brow furrowed. "What?"

I love you. He said it in his mind; he told himself to say it to her. She'd told him at Christmas that she loved him, but never said it again. He supposed she didn't want him to feel pressured to say the same. Grissom opened his mouth to say something, but couldn't make the words come out. He pulled her into a kiss instead.

When she pulled away, she had an uneasy look on her face. "Just keep in mind, when you're looking at my finances…. I told you about my trust, right?"

He nodded, "Yes."

She shifted in his arms, "Well, I'm happy to pull from there to pay for part of the house, but I wanted to keep the bulk of it for retirement."

He nodded, "Okay. I can work up a few scenarios and we can decide what we're both comfortable contributing."

She kissed him again. "Sounds like a plan. I got to get ready for work."

Grissom watched her head to the bedroom as his mind focused once again on the amount of trust she showed in him tonight. Just like the night she told him about her family. He smiled, momentarily relishing in the realization that there was so much about herself that she only shared with him. In its own way, it showed how much she loved and respected him. He hoped he deserved it.

A few hours later, after he pulled his own finances, reviewed them, and left a message with a company to get his townhouse appraised; he opened Sara's computer. It took only a few minutes to understand her nervousness about him seeing this. She didn't keep but a paychecks worth of funds in her checking, but her savings had about six months worth of expenses in it. He supposed he wasn't too surprised. Sara was thrifty, preferring to buy second hand where she could. She also had a work 401K, just like he had, but with a little less money in it than his. There was also her investment portfolio, which showed moderate gains. He was impressed that Sara, at thirty-four, clearly spent more time mapping out her retirement the last ten years, than most did before they were forty.

What surprised Grissom, was her other two accounts. The first, from what he could tell, contained the money from the sale of her place in San Francisco, which she used to make payments to the facility her mother lived in. Then there was her trust. Sara told him that the bed-and-breakfast sold for half of what it was worth. There was over seven-hundred thousand dollars in that account. She'd only withdrew money twice over the past ten years. To pay for grad school, and to buy her apartment in Frisco. He sat back for a few minutes and processed what Sara entrusted him with.

Grissom thought about his own finances. Admittedly, he assumed he would carry the bulk of the financial burden, given that he made more money at the lab, and that he made money occasionally as a guest lecturer. He's also supplemented his income by playing poker when he was young. It allowed him to pay his condo off relatively early. He also assumed that they would likely take on a mortgage. He didn't mind if it got them something that suited them both.

But as he sat back, considering everything. He suspected they might get away without taking a mortgage if he and Sara contributed equally to their house based on the sale of his townhouse. Grissom's mind went into overdrive considering multiple different scenarios that included taking a mortgage and not taking a mortgage, his townhouse selling lower than expected value or more than, and how much or littler Sara might contribute.

By time Sara walked in at the end of her shift, he cluttered the table with papers. He suspected he'd gone overboard, but he wanted to think of multiple scenarios.

She came over and gave him a kiss while he sat in front of his laptop with excel open, "Hey. You've been busy."

"Hmm." He kissed her back. He laughed at all his research and scenarios.

She sat down at the table and listened as he showed her the spreadsheets he'd made.

"Well," she said, looking at the numbers. "I think not having a mortgage would help us avoid any employment checks with HR. Matching the sale of the townhouse with my own funds seems fair, and I think will give us a decent budget to work with."

He nodded, "That's what I was thinking too."

"So… the next step then would be to reach out to a realtor. Right?"

He brought up his browser and showed her the contents of his search engine. He'd already starting looking.

She turned to him, "So… we're really doing this then?"

He tilted his head towards her, "Looks like we are, my dear."

She smiled, "We're buying a home together." She gave him a long and involved kiss he hoped led to other involved things.

We're buying a home. A home. Grissom could hardly believe that a year ago he was walking to her apartment, hoping to get her to open up and let him in. Now we're making a home.