Playlist song(s):
Wow - Thomas Newman
Line By Line (feat. Maren Morris) - JP Saxe, Maren Morris
All This Will Happen Again - Andrew Bayer
Flux - Ellie Goulding
Falls (Reprise) (feat. Sasha Alex Sloan) - ODESZA, Sasha Alex Sloan
Disclaimer: One more for the road/ocean.
Rating: T
References:
3x14, "One Hit Wonder"
3x17, "Crash and Burn"
3x22, "Play with fire"
4x03, "Homebodies"
4x07, "Invisible Evidence"
4x08, "After the Show"
4x11, "Eleven Angry Jurors"
Baby Teeth, Chapter 47, "The Good, The Bad, and The Dominatrix"
9x05, "Leave Out All the Rest"
Baby Teeth, Chapter 65, "19 Down"
Baby Teeth, Chapter 67, "Call Me Ishmael"
13x15, "Forget Me Not"
King James Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:4–8a
Trigger/Content Warning: References to animal cruelty, vague.
Author's Note: Well... here we go again? Thank you, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart to everyone who supported Baby Teeth - by reading, reviewing, messaging, favouriting and following. Even if you just read it quietly and didn't share, you were and are always welcome, and contributed to the completion of what I think is one of the more profound creative projects I've been involved with in my life.
This is Shark Teeth, the sequel to Baby Teeth, but I'd like this work to stand on its own. At the moment, I'm undecided whether Shark Teeth will be M-rated like Baby Teeth is - I'll take suggestions first from you, its readers, for the direction you think it should go in. While Baby Teeth was always going to be M+ because of the topics I wanted to touch on, I know that reduced its accessibility. I know more than a few people decided not to read or even felt weird about the fic and about me because of the content. It makes me sad to think that in my efforts to be brave and inclusive, I might have unwittingly excluded people. It's a fine line to walk, I know, and I've never taken that responsibility of your trust or belief in me lightly - so if I've disappointed anyone, I'm truly sorry.
I don't think I can promise the same wild, feckless pace of updates as Baby Teeth (230,000 words in 5 months), but I'll do what I can to keep these as regular as possible to give you some predictability. As always, knowing people are reading and enjoying - or knowing what I can do better, if you care enough to share - helps with this. Baby Teeth wasn't an accident or a fluke, it was created through community and I am forever grateful for the enduring sisterhood it introduced me to.
Original Characters
In Baby Teeth, you were introduced to a few (choice) Original Characters, who ferried our faves Gil and Sara across the River Styx (aka from 8x07 to 9x10). If you're not in the mood to meet them where they first land, here's the synopsis:
Caroline
(first appearance, Baby Teeth Chapter 50: "Dead Doll")
Brash, loud, colourful, non-nonsense, and caring, Caroline is the trauma therapist assigned to Sara after she is rescued from Ice Box Canyon in 8x01, Dead Doll. While Caroline doesn't exist in CSI original canon, she appears from time to time as a support person for both Gil and Sara in the last 17 chapters of Baby Teeth.
Gillian
(first appearance, Baby Teeth Chapter 58: "The Butterfly House")
Caroline's older sister, the opposite side of the same coin. Elegant, reserved, but equally wise and no-nonsense - Gillian tends The Butterfly House, a halfway-house/rehabilitation centre in San Francisco, where Sara first retreats when she leaves Vegas (in canon, 8x07, Goodbye and Good Luck).
Maurice
(first mention, Baby Teeth Chapter 9: "Daddy's Little Girl" - first appearance, Baby Teeth Chapter 61: "Sea Lions and Bee Hives")
Gil Grissom's friend and colleague from UCLA. An Australian Marine Biologist serving on Sea Shepherd's (in-canon) flagship, the Ocean Warrior, when Sara Sidle requests permission to board in late 2008. Deeply affectionate, wise, blunt, funny, caring, gentle, and thoughtful - Maurice, almost quite literally, ferries Sara through her break-up and delivers her to the other side where she is reunited with Gil, in Costa Rica.
Sebastian
(first appearance, Baby Teeth Chapter 66: "One to Go")
An entomologist like Gil, research and exhibition lead at Camp Nymphalidae, where Gil greets Sara after leaving Vegas (in-canon, 9x10, "One to Go"; Baby Teeth Chapter 66). Sebastian and Maurice are witnesses to Gil and Sara's civil marriage ceremony in Iquitos, Peru (Baby Teeth Chapter 67, "Call Me Ishmael") prior to their canoe journey into the heart of the Amazon for their honeymoon (in-canon reference, 10x14, "Unshockable").
Vanessa is a minor (but important) character (first appearance, Baby Teeth Chapter 61: "Sea Lions and Bee Hives"), and I haven't decided if she will make an appearance here, yet.
Temporal Anomalies
van22114 brought my awareness to a very interesting anomaly. Ordinarily, as far as I can read it, CSI is supposed to be contemporaneous (as in, airing dates should more-or-less coincide with dates in canon, loosely). There have of course been huge gaps, for example Season 8 was disrupted because of the writer's strike if memory serves - but Van being the brilliant and attentive woman she is noticed that while Forget Me Not aired in February 2013, it's supposedly Sara's birthday (which is in September). Hmmm. I know there have been some trip-ups and continuity issues on behalf of the writers, so maybe it was originally written as Valentine's Day and then was supposedly more tragic for it to be her birthday? Anyway, the only reference to that (traumatising, heartbreaking) episode is at the very end.
Music
I've added the tracks above to the Baby Teeth soundtrack and will be creating a new Shark Teeth soundtrack, too. You can find the Shark Teeth Soundtrack by searching "Butterflies and bees shark teeth" on Spotify.
POV
I'd love to know what you think about the switch from third to first-person narrative. It's going to require a bit more work on my part to get their narrative dialogue more accurate, which of course means more risk if I get it wrong (sorry), but I also think it offers a bit more freedom and, possibly, clarity as there's probably going to be more sequences where Gil and Sara are in different places (literally, and emotionally).
This story has the potential to be more ambitious than Baby Teeth because it spans 10+ years, not 4, and I kind of know where I want it to finish...
Like Baby Teeth, it's intended to both have some intense fluff and intense angst, which I feel represents the GSR rollercoaster well enough. lol.
Let's see how we go. I love you, I'm grateful for you being here, and I hope you'll join me for this next journey with our two favourite lovebirds/bees/butterflies.
xoxo BB
Shark Teeth
Prologue
SARA
My mother taught me that "happily ever after" was a lie.
When most young girls were being told fairytales of white knights and damsels, my mom was fighting her white knight and fending off the wicked witch - herself. She taught me early on that there was nobody coming to "save" me. Or any of us, really.
Caroline helped me understand that a lot of this was her warped sense of wanting to protect me, but I'm still trying to figure out which one I believe. I thought, for the longest time, that I was too jaded to hope for better than the horror stories my mom conditioned me to expect out of life. The horror stories life conditioned me to expect. I grew up expecting the worst... and I wasn't disappointed.
Then I met Gil Grissom, and that changed.
First, it changed with the butterflies in my stomach when I saw him for the first time. I'm not going to tell you some bullshit story about love at first sight, because I'm a scientist, and we all know love is neurochemical entrapment at best. No, I'd say it was more like intrigue. From the moment he stepped into that lecture theatre, with his awkward gait, his slightly nervous tics, his strangely confident and charismatic voice... I was fascinated.
Hey, I'm a scientist. I'm hard-wired to follow my curiosity, and my curiosity was leading me down a rabbit hole, following close on the tail of Gil Grissom. I knew from that moment at the Forensic Academy Conference, 1999, that this man was going to be a puzzle that would keep me guessing - keep those butterflies fluttering in my stomach - for a long, long time.
Maybe even forever.
Next, it changed with the bees.
I've learned - whether it's by science, or by love - that to love someone isn't just to learn them, and be changed by that... to let yourself be changed by that insight. It's to learn more about how they see the world around them, and let that change how you see the world, too. Not in any earth-shattering, self-losing way, but in a way that allows you to appreciate that there are infinite ways to be in the world, and the person you love - anyone you love deeply, really, and trust that much... they're another window to the world, and how to be in it.
I don't know if I'm making any sense. It doesn't make sense to me, a lot of the time.
Anyway, bees. They used to freak me out, you know? I can never remember why.
Trypophobia is pretty well documented. "Fear of a pattern of holes". Maybe it was their hives... Maybe it was that. I'd blame it on the movie My Girl, but I saw that in college and I'm pretty sure I was freaked out by them long before then.
Problem is - speaking of holes, or the fear of them - memories of my childhood are patchy at best. I'd like to think I have a steel-trap memory like Gil does, but the truth is, there are trapdoors in my mind that I've never opened and I really don't have any desire to.
Caroline can call me out for my repression all she likes, I'm just happier keeping them closed.
Either way, the bees and I were pretty good with our arrangement. I'd stay away from them, they stayed away from me, that kind of thing. And even for the first few years in Vegas, even with Grissom's apparent fondness for them, I couldn't get past my own predisposition for disgust with the little winged stingers. He let me keep a wide berth, and I was grateful.
The summer of 2003 sucked. I mean, as far as summers in Vegas go, that was the absolute worst. The lowest of lows. You think the heat and the general debauchery is bad, try dealing with that and having to work with your supervisor after asking him to dinner and having him flat-out reject you.
I was already pretty disillusioned after Melissa - and then Hank - but Grissom... that... sucked.
It's not like the rejection itself was the worst part. Of course, I was disappointed. Like I said... butterflies. It's not like years of working with him could dull that feeling of intrigue that I'd first felt in San Francisco, and the idea of always being kept at arm's length from the object of my unending curiosity was not exactly an easy one to stomach. But no, the worst part was how weird it made everything between us.
For weeks after, he would only roster me on with Warrick or Nick... and never as primary. Like I said, it sucked. Before the... incident, he used to be warm, if a little bumbling towards me. Little smiles or looks here and there to reassure me that he saw me, he knew I existed. Maybe even appreciated that existence. Tiny endearments, gazes, this ever-present magnetism that held me in his orbit, this faint gravitational pull of promise.
After that moment in his office, that tenderness disappeared. Grissom refused to greet me with anything but cold, stoic indifference. He would barely offer me the dignity of eye contact. I wondered, briefly, if I had been addicted to him for how awful it made me feel. Every moment he would have otherwise looked at me and smiled slightly, instead looking away; every time he made a joke with Catherine, Nick, or Warrick that he'd otherwise make with me. Tenderness, patience he showed to Greg.
I craved him, and he cut me off entirely. Part of me knew he was doing it to protect me, but I hated him for it. I hated myself for being so affected by it. I'd never needed another human being before, not in the way I thought I did when I met Gil Grissom. I was drowning and suffocating at the same time.
The first time we worked together that summer was the Kirkwood case. The less said about it, the better, I think. I could feel it... he was handling me with kid gloves. If I'm honest, I know I needed that at the time. That whole case just ripped me apart. Gil couldn't help but handle me gently, but it felt different. There was this edge of pity to the way he looked out for me, and it was even worst than the cold distance he'd created as a buffer between the two of us and his continuing rejection.
The near-mistrial of Rachel Lyford's killer wasn't much better. For a brief moment, with his hands on my wrists, his eyes locked with mine, his breathing just a little faster than normal - those butterflies were back. The electricity I felt rolling off him in my direction, towards me - that gravitational pull, drawing my intrigue towards him... it was all there. Like it had never left us. For a moment, I could forget that he'd snapped at me like an insolent child in the break room, how humiliated I had felt, how much that stung.
Okay, no pun intended. I'll get to the bees, I promise.
We had that one beautiful moment of captive magnetism between us, and I ruined it, of course. Always over talking... I can't think about that moment without cringing. But before me and my runaway mouth ruined it, that moment between us lived in my treasured memories of connection with Gil Grissom for a while yet. You could say I was a little desperate, and maybe you'd be right.
Things just sucked, for a while. As if it couldn't get any worse, the whole situation with Catherine and Delhomme really brought out the worst in me. I thought he'd well and truly written me off as immature, unprofessional... scorned and unable to emotionally handle it.
I gave up. I started believing it, too. Everything I said, did at work felt... stupid, somehow. I'd go home and self-flagellate on all the different ways I screwed up that day. All the ways I just couldn't seem to communicate well, do my job well, all the ways I just felt like a complete failure.
It wasn't until Chris Gibbons that things started to feel almost... normal, between us, again. I can't explain it very well. I was in the hallway outside the jurors' deliberation room, cataloguing some evidence, and he marched right up to me.
"Sara, I need your help," Gil said to me, a glint in his eye. Pure curiosity, I call that look when I see it on his face, and it shines on him like on nothing else I've ever seen. "We're looking for another body."
I felt cold with shock. "A multiple?"
And then, he smiled. "A bee."
I felt my eyebrows shoot up an inch. Now that, I didn't expect... yet somehow, it made sense. He was already walking past me into the room, and I followed, reaching into my kit on the way through for my torch. "How do you want to do this?"
"Why don't we canvas the carpet on either side of the table. Meet you in the middle?" he asked, and I nodded. I tried not to read too much into his words, or his tone, but... look, there was a lot going on in my mind at that moment.
Maybe it was as much a relief for him as it was for me, to not hold back anymore. I don't know. All I knew is that he'd spoken more than a sentence to me without turning away, avoiding my eyes. He'd smiled at me.
All because of a bee.
Alright, I don't know if it was just the bee, per se. That's the only context I can give to the sudden shift in our relationship, back to its comfortable equilibrium. There was a lightness, an ease in him then. It was a puzzle, and he was lost in solving it, in his element. The butterflies were back in my stomach. He was puzzling something, and I was puzzling him.
It felt like, for a brief moment, I had Gil Grissom - the real, original artefact - back for a blissful moment. I don't know whether it had anything to do with me, or the bee, but after an entire summer of cold rejection... it was warmth, right to the soul.
So there we were, crawling over the floor of the deliberation room, sweeping the carpet for a bee. And I remember thinking, I've got to find this thing, because it meant just one more reason for him to look at me... just one more reason for him to smile at me. Just one, that's all I need, I remember thinking. Just one more smile my way, and I'm good for another season of drought.
I'd never wanted to see a bee more than I had in that moment. And... like some kind of apparition brought forth by my desperation - there it was, the tiny body of this blessed creature tucked just inside the lip of the foot of the boardroom table. Trying not to whoop for joy, or let on that I was anything but passably glad to discover the object of Grissom's search, I grasped it gently with my tweezers and sat back on my haunches slightly. "The killer, I presume?" I said, and I hoped he couldn't hear the slight lilt of hope in my tone. Smooth, Sidle.
Suddenly, he was there - crouching at the corner of the table, right next to me. It wasn't the same dark, hungry, breathless magnetism I'd felt weeks before when I'd asked him to 'pin me down' and demonstrate how the wax transferred onto the bedsheet. No... this was Gil Grissom, once again himself, with me.
I was vaguely aware of myself explaining something to him, and feeling him watching me as I did. He was looking at me... and he was looking at me like he hadn't seen me in months. He was listening to me like I was real, and there, not some passing inconvenience he had to deal with as an occupational hazard.
We were talking, and it felt normal, for the first time in months.
And you know what he did next? He made a joke.
"Well that explains it," he said, with this air of mock-seriousness on his face, eyes cast out to the window before he looked back to me, deadpan. "It was an outside job."
For the first time in an entire summer of silence, he made a joke. Not for the benefit of the team, or Warrick, or Nick... or anyone else. He made a joke, just for me to hear. He did something to make me smile, and I did.
Look, I don't know what to tell you. But after that day, me and the bees?
I realised that maybe they weren't so bad, after all.
First, it was the butterflies. Then, it was the bees.
And then... baby teeth.
Gil Grissom fundamentally changed the way I saw life. When I first saw him; then when I got to know him. But when we got to together, even more so. He was patient... he was kind. He did not envy, or boast. He was not arrogant or rude. He didn't insist on his own way... he wasn't irritable, or resentful.
Even at my lowest, even when I did us the most wrong, he didn't rejoice at that.
The one thing Gil has always rejoiced in, was truth.
Yes, I may be agnostic - but I've read the bible, and even I'm a sucker for that verse in Corinthians, now.
His love taught me that I could be loved not only for who I am but for what I've lost, and how I learned to love from that. And loving him taught me to be more patient, and kind... and less irritable, particularly on long nights with no coffee.
Then, in his absence, I learned how to better love myself.
Okay, that feels weird, but I know I've definitely gone over this with Caroline and I'm trying to learn how to use gentle language around myself, too. And it's the truth! It's hard to explain. But after I left for San Francisco, I started changing, more than I had when we were together. I started seeing this possibility for a better life, something I'd never been able to picture when I was a child. Or, even when I was in college, or after.
Life wasn't this... long stretch of existence I had to endure, anymore. I started to believe it could be something beautiful.
You could probably forgive me for being sold on the fairytale when he turned up at Camp Nymphalidae, after wresting our GPS coordinates from Sebastian via Maurice, via satellite phone. You've gotta admit that's some fairytale shit, right there. After everything we'd lost, through our lives together and apart - after every little way we had broken each others' hearts - Gil Grissom found his way back to me like it was some inevitable, foregone conclusion.
That story he had once told me about baby teeth, about how we lose them and choose how we want to love in the spaces they leave... it felt like a prophecy. That we had both lost so much, but that made us all the more equipped to love each other in the broken places.
Our whirlwind adventures? Our elopement in the courthouse in Iquitos? Our river adventure honeymoon into the heart of the Amazon?
I'm a scientist, okay. And at this point, all of the evidence pointed to forever.
Thing is, I've learned over time that loss is not like baby teeth.
When I take the rose-tinted glasses off, I remember that Gil told me that story after he'd spent the night with Heather during a case. Was it manipulation? I don't know. I don't like to think so. I believe him, that it was something Betty told him. We never brought it up with her, but once I met her, it made sense, you know?
Betty likes to talk in riddles. No wonder her son picked that particular habit up.
The parable of baby teeth is a sweet one. It's nice to believe we all have a set amount of heartbreak to endure in our lives, and that once it's done, we've grown enough to endure whatever life has to throw at us after. But I've learned, in my life, that's just not the case.
There's no set amount of loss that we have to endure. Some people don't even lose all of their baby teeth. And some… some lose much, much more.
I don't like to think about it too much. I don't like to count my losses, it isn't helpful.
The baby teeth parable depends on the fact that humans are diphyodont. It means, we lose just one set of teeth and the next is permanent.
Like we get one first draft of our mouths.
I remember this conversation I had with Maurice, once. On the Ocean Warrior. We were moored near a shallow reef, and the water was so cerulean clear you could see right to the bottom, if it wasn't for the refraction of the light warping the size and shape of everything down there. You could just make out the shape of a nursery of Galapagos sharks below the ship. Gliding, graceful, in their mother element.
"Most Pacific cultures treasure the shark as an apex predator and indicator species, you know," Maurice murmured, both of us hypnotised by the sight before us. "It's something I've always really loved. Modern society hates them because they'll accidentally take a nibble out of us thinking we're sea canapes," - I laughed. Maurice did have a way to make light of anything - "but they're revered by the people who know this ocean best."
I nodded, humming my agreement. Sharks, as with all animals, had their beauty and their darkness. I've always had my edges, had this darkness to me that most people feared. I'm not some fluffy, adorable creature that most people want to squeeze. Maybe that's why I was always destined to be loved by a scientist. Someone who could look past aesthetics to see my true nature, without judgement.
"I've never really understood the term, 'shark-infested waters'," I said, "I mean... it's their house."
It was Maurice's turn to laugh, then. A great, booming, warm laugh that rolled out over the bow and echoed back to us from the glass-windowed ship's bridge. I grinned at him then, only briefly looking away from the sight of the sharks. We settled into this companionable silence, as only Maurice and I could.
"They're polyphyodont, you know," he said, gently. It was a week or so after our conversation about the Grissom baby teeth parable, right here on the bow of the ship. A week or so after I'd recorded a video and sent it to Gil via satellite internet, finally setting him free.
Maurice hadn't asked for the details. He'd just turned up at my cabin with a bottle of scotch. And - before you get any ideas - no, he did it as a friend.
I'd looked up at him, puzzled.
"It means they have more than one or two sets of teeth," he explained, grinning a wide-toothed smile and reaching up to tap on a gold-crowned tooth with the nail of his index finger. "Sharks just keep losing and regrowing their teeth throughout their lives. They fall out, drop to the ocean floor, and then wash up on beaches among all the shells and sand and bits of coral. Most people will spend their lives walking over beaches and never realise they've probably walked over a hundred shark's teeth without knowing it."
"Wow," I remember saying, eyes wide, trying to imagine whether I'd accidentally trodden on a shark's tooth, thinking it was some kind of shell or other debris from the ocean. "I always thought..."
"That those necklaces were made from killing sharks?" he asked, smiling. Maurice had this way of answering questions without making someone feel small, or stupid. Gil could do it too, but he wasn't always quite as good. In his haste to correct a wrong or share his knowledge, he could sometimes be flippant and blunt, in a way that set some people's teeth on edge. "I mean, it's not a silly assumption. There's plenty of capitalist nonsense that relies on killing, or harming, animals for our 'enjoyment'. But no, they just find shark teeth and make necklaces out of them. Or leiomano. Shark teeth have been used throughout Pan-pacific cultures for all kinds of everyday objects, and treasures too. Pacific men often wear shark tooth necklaces to symbolise masculinity, although masculinity in those indigenous cultures is sometimes different from what we see as masculinity now. Strong, protective… but also nurturing, loving."
It was one of those moments when I had to stop and breathe, as the memory of Gil struck across the bow of my heart. Okay, okay, you try spending weeks at sea and not to developing some ocean metaphors.
I remembered how safe I'd once felt with his arms around me. Even when I was completely naked, his presence was like an extra set of armour. How he could be strangely, quietly fearless - without bravado or show - and ever-watchful. Once, he had been my guiding light through the darkest moments.
"I think people see sharks as these heartless, mindless predators," Maurice spoke, and I could hear the deep affection in his voice. "I know back home they do. One of my mates, surfer, lost part of his leg to a whitey who wanted a nibble," he looked over at me and smiled, grimly, the humour of his comment not lost on her despite the tragedy and gravity in his tone.
Sobered, lost in thought, Maurice shook his head and looked back out to sea. "They kill them in my country. Because they don't understand them... they don't want to," his voice broke, and I felt an ache in mine, too. I swallowed, blinking, watching the shapes of the sharks dozens of metres below us. "They are beautiful, refined works of genetic art. They keep the oceans clean, balanced. They are desperately needed… but they are hated for it. Because people fear them. They fear how much they can endure, they fear the very instincts that make them so resilient."
I remember my heart going out to those creatures in the deep below, unaware of our presence, our watchful gaze and ocean hearts pouring out towards them from the bow of the Ocean Warrior.
I remember thinking, I think I know what that feels like.
These days, I often think back to the courthouse in Iquitos. I can't help it - I don't really want to, but that day haunts my dreams as much as my nightmares.
I was wearing that gold necklace Gil gave me for our first anniversary - the necklace he used to tell me the story of 'baby teeth'. I was wearing a white dress and flats, I was holding his hand. The gold rings we'd had made on the way through Colombia; the halting English of the magistrate as he read us the conditions of civil matrimony in Peru.
Our vows.
My upbringing taught me not to trust fairytales. My mother taught me that 'happily ever after' was a lie. But that moment, the moment Gil and I made those promises of forever to each other, struck me as the closest thing to believing forever was a possibility for me. For us.
A long time ago - a lifetime ago, it feels - Grissom once told me he used to look at me, and wonder, how much can someone lose? That he admired how I had never become less from all the losses I'd endured.
My mother told me every person has baby teeth, and you've got to lose 'em to grow. We have to lose things to become whole. She told me about how losing her hearing helped her become a better listener. She told me, losing my father would make me a better man, one day. I didn't really understand it, but then I met you, and… I think I do now.
Sara, I have never met anyone who has lost as much as you, and is still so… whole. So much more than your losses. You are… you are smart, and beautiful, and funny, and… you care, so much. Everything that was taken from you, every... baby tooth you lost... somehow you turned into gold.
It was all a lie. The butterflies, the bees, the baby teeth. The promises of forever.
Humans are diphyodont - we lose our baby teeth before we are grown. But I've learned that loss, for me - if anything, is more like shark teeth.
There's no limit to how much I have to lose, in my lifetime.
September 2012
TBC
