Chapter Two
Disclaimers, headers in Chapter One
Notes: Thanks to everyone who has read and commented. It means a lot more than I can say. Picking up where we left off…
********
She walked in, her step uncertain, and pushed the door back jerkily, as if her hand had encountered some invisible resistance from its hinges and joints. He could only assume that some inner reluctance was to blame; he had put a few drops of oil into its creakier places not very long before. Usually, he would have ignored something so trivial, but his ears translated sound so unevenly now that high-pitched noises grated on his nerves as badly as the lower tones that he strained to strain to catch at all. Amplification, dampening--sometimes one, sometimes the other, but never simply 'normal.' Not anymore.
Grissom dragged his attention back from that brink to contemplate another, which despite its lovelier form was no less dangerous. Is she dangerous? He followed the evidence with his eyes. Black heels, tailored and sleek; smooth skin rising to the hem of her skirt; an improbable curve from hip to waist encased in a slightly textured material, soft and gray. There were other clues: the light gray blouse that skimmed her torso, the beaded necklace encircling her neck, which drew the eye to the hollow of her throat. From a purely physical standpoint, he supposed, lost in this investigation, all of the things he had just cataloged held danger enough. But as he progressed to tracing the fine bones of her face, marked by its high cheekbones and generous mouth, he had to acknowledge the truth. The true brink was in her eyes.
Strangely preoccupied by the whorls in the floor during his study of her, she only looked up when she felt his gaze on her face. They watched each other. He wanted to speak, tried to speak, but her look made him hesitate. His future lay in those eyes, and right now, they refused to be read. Dangerous. So dangerous.
"Are you all right?"
Could a sound so soft possibly harm? He blinked and pressed his fist into his thigh. Pay attention. This is real; this has to be done.
"Yes, I'm…No." It was impossible to know where to begin. There was so much to say.
"You seemed a little…distracted on the stand. Well, not distracted, because I could see how closely you were watching that Westcott woman as she spoke, but…" She caught his slight flinch, and trailed off in confusion. None of this was her business, really. I deserve to have a life, but just not your life, right? And yet, even after that, here I am.
"I was having some trouble," he said, awkwardly, as if experimenting with some foreign tongue. "I was having some trouble…" He fought his hands, flattening them against his sides as he forced the next word from his lips, "focusing."
Sara frowned. "That's what I thought, but…you're the most focused person I know. I don't understand."
Why was he staring at her like that? He looked so…lost. Unsure. Was it possible? He's not yours to worry about anymore, if he ever was. Just let it go. But the staring was applying a kind of torque to her heart.
"What, what is it, Grissom? Are you ill?"
The half-laugh, a peculiar noise that slipped from his lips in a rush of agitation and shame, could not have been more ill timed. He saw her face close.
"Sara, I need to--"
"I really don't know why I came in here," she said hurriedly, backing up towards the door. "I should go; I have that life to get back to, don't I?"
"Wait, don't." He moved in closer, angling his body between her and the door. "Wait."
Her arms crossed into a familiar position across her stomach. She looked away from his face, which was turned to hers from where he now stood, just behind her.
"That's not the life I meant."
The frown returned, marring the smoothness of her skin.
"I was speaking…generically. You deserve to have a life, like everyone else does, not some specific kind of life with--" He stumbled, tangling himself in the urge to say something, anything, while his courage held. "With anyone in particular."
She turned her head, her eyes sharp and a little bright. "What does that mean?"
His future, watching him with a face full of questions and doubt--he could feel the first of a series of tiny shudders, small but strong, snake through him. He just managed not to back away. "It means--"
He closed his lips and his eyes. Life chooses life. Am I even really alive?
"Do you believe me?"
His eyes opened.
"Do you believe me?"
"About what?" Some buried instinct warned him to speak carefully.
She rotated her body so that she was facing him squarely with her feet planted opposite his.
"That I'm not having a relationship with him."
He stared. She waited, challenging him with her eyes. He braved it for a few seconds before he had to look away.
"Excuse me." She was past him and at the door in an instant.
"Sara, wait." He tried to sound firm. "It doesn't matter."
She wheeled around, her dark eyes wide with disbelief. "Of course it matters, Grissom. Why can't you just answer the question?"
"I…I don't know what I believe or don't believe. I can barely think right now. I only know that I want to—"
"You really don't trust me at all, do you?"
This isn't…that isn't…I can't focus."I trust you. I do."
It was her turn to laugh, a scornful sound that echoed unpleasantly in his ears. "And yet, when I tell you I'm not seeing him, you don't believe me. Must be a special kind of trust." She hunched her shoulders in a caricature of her usual eloquent shrug. "I'm so flattered."
"I do trust you." Some part of his distracted mind could sense the likelihood of flight; he took hold of her arm near the shoulder.
"Then why don't you believe me?"
The small part of her that he could feel was so tense it hardly seemed as if he was touching her real body at all. He had expected softness, had counted on it, in some obscure way. But it was already gone, it seemed, before he had even told her the truth. How much worse would it be if she knew? His answer came slowly, as the realization broke over him.
"Because you couldn't possibly…"
You couldn't possibly want me if you knew. Not like I want you. And without that mutuality, that perfect symmetry, he knew it would never work.
Sara, left to decipher the flashes across his face when his voice died in his throat, finished his thought in the only way she could. You couldn't possibly…be true. You couldn't possibly be true to me.
Whatever animation had been left in her face faded in precise tandem with the remaining light in her eyes. He watched it happen, the slow draining of life, with a kind of sick recognition. He administered blankness, as a master of the art, but he had never been on the other side, not with her.
"You know, at least I can guess where Marjorie Westcott is coming from." Her voice was eerily calm.
This was his chance, surely—he should have started there as soon as she walked in. Her asking about his welfare had confused him; he should have been asking about hers. It had worked before when he couldn't gather his thoughts quickly enough—turn the focus onto her, and try to get out ahead of her to keep her from contemplating him too closely.
"I know what happened in there, Sara, Gerard just called and told me. I'm so sorry--"
It was as if he had not spoken at all.
"She's a professional shark, plain and simple. No thought, no conscience, always assuming the worst of everyone she encounters because it might benefit her client, somehow." Sara cast her eyes over his shoulder. "But you…you believe what you believe not because of it's your job, but because you think it's actually true. And that I am…not true." She began to nod rhythmically, like some beautiful sage. "I already knew that it would be hard to push her accusations to the back of my mind." Then the nodding ceased.
"But I had no idea that I'd have to find a place in my mind for yours."
His gripped the small part of her he held tightly, too tightly. She didn't seem to notice. The words kept coming.
"A woman who lets her emotions get the better of her work. A woman who could screw up evidence to please…" She swallowed, a jagged, convulsive spasm of muscles and tendons that held him spellbound. "…the men she works with. A woman who could have a relationship with one man and…play some awful…game with another."
Despite the thin glaze that now clouded her vision, no tears fell, and she managed to find his eyes.
"I guess, I guess I shouldn't blame you, right? Who could possibly trust a woman like that? As a colleague, or as a…"
He caught his breath for the second time that day. Hearing the woman he loved describe the situation so decisively, as if she had nothing but the purest logic on her side was surely the worst proof. Proof of what he still could not bring himself to do.
He could feel her slipping out from under his hand; his hold had loosened as she looked into his eyes. She took a step back, a sentiment punctuated by the double click of her tapered heels striking the floor. She watched him as he stared at her with his mouth parted as if he were about to speak. The same look as before. He hadn't spoken then, either. Silence, the new language of love--how could she have forgotten? Love unreturned.
She moved to the door once more, but he caught at her upper arm just as she laid her hand on the knob. They stood in place like two weary fighters, the one behind trying clumsily and with his final ounce of strength to pull the one in front back, back to the fray. Better to fight together than to be at peace alone. He pulled at that arm, which was so small and thin that his hand completely engulfed it, and tugged her a step backwards. But before he could move his free hand to her other arm to hold her and pull her back against him, she wrenched herself away. She neither spoke nor looked back at him again. She simply pulled the door just wide enough to slip through and vanished from his sight.
She moved as quickly as her shaky legs would allow. Through her haze, she could grasp only one coherent thought: get away. Car, home, and then… The destination didn't matter; she could take the day that followed and go wherever a map might take her. But she had to get away before she saw him again.
TBC…