Title: Journey of the Lonely Whale: Evolution (Month 12)
Author: Lisa (ljkwriting4life)
Rating: M. This story contains strong adult themes including references to violence, sexual references, and coarse language.
Pairing: Gil/Sara
Summary: One year since re-marrying, Gil and Sara return to San Diego to fulfil work commitments. While Sara becomes involved in a case that stirs memories of the past, she is also pushed by those around her to consider her future and her place in the world.
Notes: The JOTLW series aims to fill a gap between Immortality and CSI: Vegas. It does foreshadow CSI: Vegas and refers often to storylines established in the original CSI.
This story follows JOTLW Day 1 and Day 5 and is #3 in the series, but is set one year later.
ONE
Gil hated to admit it, but this was the most amount of fun he'd ever had waiting for an eye exam. He didn't even mind that the optometrist was running late or that he and Sara were sitting in a bland waiting room in the middle of a shopping mall on a busy Saturday morning instead of being outdoors and enjoying the great San Diego weather. Sara minded, though. Their upholstered chairs were pressed right up against one another, with all the chairs arranged in pairs around side tables and fake plants, and Sara sat on his right with a stubborn grimace on her face. Her right leg was was crossed over the left, her body was turned toward him even though she was staring straight ahead, and she was relentlessly jiggling her right ankle and foot in mid-air just in front of his own legs. To an outsider it might have looked like she was impatient and pissed off that the optometrist was running late, but Gil knew she was in no hurry to get inside that small dark room. No hurry whatsoever.
"Sara," he said gently. He just wanted her to be still. He wasn't used to the jiggling, she was usually so calm and it was making him anxious, but she was having none of his soothing voice.
"This is stupid," she said again.
"Sara, it's not," Gil reasoned gently. "You're getting headaches, and it's getting worse. I've been wearing glasses for years, it's fine."
"Yeah, for you," she said. She gestured to the glasses case he held in his lap. "You look good in glasses," she continued when she looked into his eyes. "Distinguished. Sexy. I look like a freak."
"How do you know, if you've never worn any?" he asked.
Gil smiled a little.
He appreciated the compliment, but he was also bemused that Sara was comparing herself to him, just to put herself down. He was the only one who ever saw her most of the time, and she knew how attracted he was to her. How could she possibly think so little of her own appearance, to suggest that merely adding glasses when she wanted to read would make her any less beautiful?
Or distinguished, he thought, and definitely sexy.
Her choice of the word 'freak' suggested to Gil that this was a worry from childhood or adolescence, a taunt from the schoolyard perhaps. They never used the word 'freak' in their daily adult conversations, and it sounded odd to hear Sara express herself that way.
Was his intelligent and highly rational wife really telling him that she was more worried about how glasses would make her look than she was about the fact that the last time she read for too long on the boat, the subsequent headache made her so dizzy she threw up and she couldn't even stand up? Because that was sure what worried him. For at least six months this had been getting worse, so either she stopped reading, or she wore glasses. Simple. Unavoidable. Had their positions been reversed Sara would have been adamant about Gil getting glasses, just as she had been adamant about this whole parade of health check-ups they had been on since returning to San Diego, and this optometrist appointment was the easiest part! Her protest was completely unlike her, and he thought he understood why. He just wanted to keep her calm and make her see reason.
"You look good in sunglasses," he added.
"That's different," Sara insisted, mumbling. "Sunglasses are cooler."
Gil chuckled. He shook his head and smirked wisely at her.
"And you call yourself a science nerd," he said, teasing, hoping she cracked a smile.
"Yeah, well, your prescription's changed too," she said, still not smiling. Strike one.
"Of course it has, that's why I'm here."
"I can't believe it, you're actually excited," Sara said. She stared at him curiously. Gil's smile grew as he let her see that she was right, in the hope she might feel a spark of excitement too.
"Honestly, there's something satisfying about a new pair of glasses. You put them on when they arrive and everything's that little bit clearer. Plus, I like picking out the frames."
"I thought you said you'd had the same frames for years."
"I have," he confirmed. Again, that was why he was there beside her. "This time I think I'll go for something different," he said. "More distinguished. Sexy." He frowned in mock thoughtfulness and nodded. "Mm, yes." He was trying to make her laugh, but it didn't work. Strike two, he thought.
"I hate you. You think this is funny."
"Extremely," he admitted.
"I'm not going to wear them," she insisted.
"Sara, you need glasses," Gil insisted. He let go of trying to be funny and tried the rational approach. "It's a miracle you got to forty-seven without needing glasses of any kind, when you think about the work we used to do. Now, you still like to read? We need to check your prescription."
"Whatever," she said on a sigh. She couldn't argue with that. "But for the record," she added when she glanced at him. "I'd like to point out that yesterday I'm the one who had to go to the doctor just so you wouldn't sulk, and I know you're only here for your own appointment because I have to be, so fair is fair, and you could be a little less delighted by my discomfort. Did I sit there and tease you about needing a check-up? No. Even though my check-up came with a breast exam and a papsmear and a bunch of stupid questions. What did they do to you, slap on a blood pressure cuff?"
"I'm more concerned about your blood pressure right now, honey. Just breathe."
"I am," she said through gritted teeth.
Gil raised his eyebrows. He had not seen that look in a while. There was real emotion just beneath the surface of her grimace. Sara was really struggling with this for some reason, he realised. She wasn't just being stroppy or vain. He sighed. He didn't want to make it worse.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I appreciate that I was more reluctant to go to the doctor, and you're more reluctant to be here. None of this is fun for either of us, it just has to be done, as we agreed."
He looked at her to remind her that it was in fact her idea. He had agreed with her idea.
Sara narrowed her eyes at him, semi-playfully, and a smile almost made it to her lips.
"You know," she said. "For someone who used to delight in collecting blood samples from your staff, you did seem to have an odd aversion to getting a simple blood test. When was the last time you even had a full physical before yesterday?"
"When was the last time you had an eye exam?" Gil replied. He knew the answer to that, and it was no better than his own answer would have been. "Have I ever told you about the glaucoma test?" he asked. "Talk about surprising." He grinned wickedly.
"Gil-"
She shook her head in frustration and almost, almost looked a little scared, but he knew there was no reason to be afraid, and Sara knew enough about eye exams even if she'd never had a thorough one to know that as well. He didn't really think it was the exam that was worrying her.
"Put it this way," he said more seriously. "You're not going to be any good in the lab to Nick if you can't read. It's okay to be nervous, but this is important."
"I know," she said. She frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown, one directed more at herself than at Gil. "I'm not nervous," she decided. "I'm just…" She trailed off and looked away. She sighed. "Okay, I'm nervous," she admitted quietly. "But not about this."
"About going back to the lab," Gil surmised. She said nothing but he saw her jaw tighten and the stubborn look in her eyes as she stared at the closed door across from them. "It's only for a month," he said.
"It's been a year."
"You were gone for nearly two years the last time, and you were fine going back."
"That was different," Sara said.
Gil pursed his lips together and looked at her curiously. He wasn't sure why.
Sara glanced at him and sighed when she realised she would have to explain it out loud.
"I was younger," she began. She gestured with the hand between them as her arm rested on the joined armrests of their two chairs. "I wasn't very happy with life, with where I was, I felt unfulfilled, so I was going back to a place where I was comfortable, and my heart was still in it."
Gil didn't hold her feelings about their time in Europe against her, she had been unfulfilled, but his heart wrenched at what Sara wasn't saying, if all of the above were true. He turned towards her and reached across his body to rest his far hand on her forearm. His right arm beside her stretched over the top of the two chairs and he played with her long ponytail. She was having a hard time looking at him, because she had also just heard herself, both what she said and didn't say. Gil focused on the dozens of long, silver, wavy hairs that had grown out in force over the year, many still tipped in the faded remnants of brown dye, but there was a stubbornness to their visibility that Gil thought was very Sara. They sparkled beneath the store's lights amongst the rest of her brown hair.
"If your heart isn't in it, Sara," he said softly. "Then that's okay. You don't have to do it."
"Yes I do," she insisted. She turned her head to look him in the eyes and Gil let his fingers trail from her hair. "I want to," she said. "It's important and I promised Nick and we're back here anyway for…all of this." She gestured to the closed appointment room doors. "It'll be good, and the money will be great for us, for the boat. It'll be fine."
Gil wasn't sure how successful she was at convincing herself of that idea, but he would never underestimate her determination. After all, a year ago he had thought he would never see her again, and she had been living in Las Vegas and throwing her hat in the ring to become the director of the crime lab there, and they were divorced, and technically not speaking. They hadn't spoken in years.
So much had changed, and in many ways that was because of Sara, because of what Sara had decided she wanted in her life, and she liked to have the odd whinge about the boat but it was clear to Gil how much she had also come to love their life on it. She was struggling with the number of people on the street and in the shops, how loudly everyone seemed to speak to one another compared to how the two of them spoke to one another, and the sounds of cars and honking horns.
Gil was struggling with those things too, but he was used to the back-and-forth more than Sara; from the open water on their boat to all of humanity on the US coast. They had been away from the US for over nine months, and Sara had never come back from such a long journey before.
At least they were getting out of their noisy old motel shortly, and into a comfortable home.
Gil also suspected that Sara would feel better once she went to the hairdresser. She had secured a rare Sunday appointment for 'the full enchilada', as she put it, at a salon down the road from where their new home would be. She'd also had an admittedly terrible appointment at the doctor's office the previous day, a much worse time than his simple prostate exam. She had given Gil the low-down on her appointment and she was clearly still upset about the way the doctor had spoken to her, and on top of it all, having to get reading glasses for the first time probably wasn't as exciting for people who had spent their entire lives with perfect vision. Just another sign of getting older, right? Gil had worn glasses for decades, it was just a part of him and he didn't see it the way others might, but it would probably always be that annoying extra for Sara, a hassle, a reminder.
"Sara Sidle?"
The optometrist was a petite and very young woman, and she had opened one of the doors in front of them. She smiled at Sara as she held a clipboard containing Sara's new patient information. They were the only two people waiting, and Gil gave her hand a brief squeeze when she grasped the seat to stand on her long, thin legs. She towered over the optometrist and offered the girl an awkward smile.
"Good luck," he said. He knew she would be fine, but he also knew she was going to walk out of that room in twenty minutes with a very strong prescription for reading glasses. Thank God.
"Only two more nights in purgatory," Sara declared more happily that night as she returned from the bathroom in her pyjamas after brushing her hair and teeth before bed. Gil was standing at the window of their upstairs motel room that led to a balcony that overlooked the parking lot. It was a standard setup in this part of the world, but the main road was a lot noisier at night than they had anticipated, complete with amateur drag racing and cars backfiring into the early hours, and the walls between rooms were paper thin. There were long-term residents on either side of them, one couple who enjoyed extreme lovemaking and their headboard shared a wall with Gil and Sara's own bed, and another couple who enjoyed antagonising each other to initiate extreme arguing that then culminated in vocal, angry sex, and Sara hadn't slept, neither of them had slept much at all since coming ashore. It really did feel like purgatory, and it definitely did not feel safe. Gil suspected they should have asked Nick for advice on where to stay for a few days after discovering the marina was at liveaboard capacity and they couldn't stay on the boat while they got set up, because this was a booking fail, certainly in the top three worst places he had stayed on land in a good eight years.
"All is quiet, for now," he said softly with a smooth smile as he watched the street outside. "Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything. Gordon Hempton."
"Ah, the acoustic ecologist, I'm impressed," Sara said. She gestured to both of their room's shared walls. "Can we tell our neighbours this important truth, just for one night? What do you think Gordon would make of their screaming and humping? We make less noise on our boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and yet they're in the middle of a motel with us right next door and augh, it's-"
She pulled a disgusted, expressive face that made him laugh. He let the thin and somewhat see-through curtain fall back across the window and walked over to her.
"I wish we were on our boat in the middle of the ocean," Gil told her as he slid his arms around her waist and up her back. Sara's words had triggered wonderful intimate memories of them together on the boat, and making a little noise with Sara suddenly sounded entirely appealing. Sara laid her slender arms over his shoulders. She smiled softly as she caressed the back of his neck. Because she was leaning back in his arms, the longest ends of her hair tickled his hands. Gil sighed as he looked into her brown eyes and as his palms and fingers rubbed across her back, still holding her securely. She was warm and relaxed in his embrace and she smelt amazing. This was torture.
Sara watched him quietly for a long moment with a knowing, gentle look in her eyes.
"Gil," she said finally. "There is still no way we are having sex in this room. There's already enough DNA in here, it's bad enough we have to sleep in that bed and the curtain is sheer. No."
"I know," he whispered. He agreed, in fact. The curtain was sheer and that was an automatic deal-breaker, and while Sara smelt amazing, their bed did not. Besides, it wouldn't be long before-
"Oh God," Sara said under her breath when something slammed into the wall by their bed. Couple number one. "Gil, I can't-"
"Wanna go for a drive?" Gil asked hopefully.
Sara nodded quickly. They both winced when someone moaned against the wall.
Gil let go of his wife and watched her hurriedly switch out her pyjama pants for her jeans. He grabbed her flip flops and their keys. He was glad he had waited to put his own pyjamas on. They could wait a little longer.
"This is better," Sara said after long minutes of silence between them. Gil had driven them to the beach, they had parked in a nearby street and walked down to the sand at the beach's entrance, where they were sitting on a gentle slope in the dark by the grass. Sara had snuggled in between his legs and into his arms. Gil enjoyed the feeling of wrapping her up in his body as she closed her eyes.
"You're tired," he said kindly.
"Exhausted," she admitted on a sigh. "And grumpy. Was the world always this noisy?"
"I've felt like that my whole life," he said, though that was nothing new to her. "My home was always quiet after dad died because mom and I only used sign language. I remember on school holidays if I was reading and doing experiments at home, I could go days without even hearing my own voice. Every time I went back to school and sat in a classroom with all those kids, they were always talking, the teacher shouting, the bells, it was…disconcerting. Intrusive." He paused. "I hope," he added softly. "That I haven't made your life too quiet, Sara. I never meant for that to happen."
"I did," Sara assured him. "I needed it, maybe I still need it, I don't know. We'll see." She yawned against his neck and he kissed her head and stroked her hair. He could just see the long, silver hairs sparkling in what little light they could capture. He touched a few admirably.
"Honey are you really going to color your hair?" he asked.
"Yes," she said without hesitating. "And it needs inches taken off it, Gil. It's not healthy."
"I think it's amazing," he whispered. It was the longest it had ever been, soft and wavy. She hadn't cut it in over a year, she hadn't done anything to it, didn't even have a straightener on the boat, and it looked healthy enough to him. Gil let Sara regularly trim his own hair, but he wasn't game to touch hers and she never really asked him too. Too complicated with the curls, she would say. Now suddenly they were back in the US and she wanted it cut, straightened, colored. He did know why; he wasn't judging her. He wasn't ignorant to wider society.
"Thank you," she said. She hummed and enjoyed the head rub and the way his fingers combed through her hair as they held one another. "I know you love it, and I love you for that. I'm just not ready for everyone to start seeing me with grey hair. I know you don't care. You're-"
"Sixty-two?" he suggested. He chuckled when she tickled his waist and his leg.
"I was going to say a man, but sure," she said. She sat up and looked him in the eyes. "It's different," she told him. "I'm getting closer to fifty and it's awkward, Gil. I'm not young, but I'm not old either, and I'm going to be spending a month at the lab working and teaching and helping Nick and his supposedly very young crew. Letting it go while we've been on the boat was nice, and I'll do it again, but I want to walk into that lab feeling professional, not looking like the wild middle-aged ocean woman who hardly ever washes her hair. I want people to see me, to respect me."
"Sara, you will always command respect, always," he assured her. "But," he added quickly when she opened her mouth to protest. He held up a hand to stop her. "I get it," he said. He smiled. "You do whatever you feel you need to do."
"I…want you to see me like that again too, you know," she admitted with a shy smile and a glimmer in her eyes. "A little like new again."
Gil nodded and cupped her cheek with his hand. He wasn't going to argue with her if that was how she felt. There had been a lot of frustrations over the past few days, they'd had a lot to do and people to meet with and places to be, and no sleep. He didn't think he needed to say anything more. A little smile, and a familiar touch on her cheek, and she leant in and kissed him. Gil met her eagerly as they wrapped their arms around each other and listened to the sounds of the ocean. If they ever did leave the boat permanently, Gil always wanted to be able to hear the ocean, but after two full days of house-hunting for temporary accommodation he wasn't sure that would be possible. Being able to visit on a whim like this was the next best thing for the time being, though. He smiled into the kiss when Sara hummed and pressed herself against him. She smiled against his lips as well.
"Much, much better than the motel," she mumbled happily.
"Mm, not the first time I've made out on a beach with my wife," he replied before the kiss continued for a while. "So many beaches."
"Wonderful beaches," she agreed. "Might tell Nick not to expect me to stay late, or forever."
"Famous last words," Gil whispered in her ear before kissing his way down to her neck. He knew she would get sucked back into the science and the people and the cases, but he was happy for her, and he was looking forward to her telling him about her days when she did get home.
"Gil," she said in warning. "If you give me a hickey thirty-six hours before I start work-"
"Ahuh, I won't," he promised, thoroughly delighted by her sigh and the grip of her hands on his arms as he kissed her. "But I might," he added. "After you get your new glasses, in five to seven days, and I find you sitting up reading in them before bed…and you'll realise how sexy they are."
"Very funny," Sara said.
Gil chuckled but lifted his head to look back into her eyes.
"Oh, you think I'm joking?" he asked playfully. "I've been picturing this for months, darlin'. What do you think I'm thinking about when I'm staring into the ocean all that time? Fish?"
Sara glared at him but this time it was impossible for her to hide her wise grin, because they both knew that in fact, yes, some of the time he was thinking about fish, but the rest of the time-
"Okay," she admitted. "Maybe needing reading glasses won't be so bad."
Gil grinned and held her cheek. He would make sure she didn't regret it.