Existing
by Anansay
April 17, 2003
He was doing it again. Uttering nonsense – disjointed bits of words strung together in a mockery of a sentence attempting to camouflage itself as a coherent thought having been given voice. But it wasn't working. The meaning was utterly lost on Sara. What did that have to do with the case at hand anyhow? She shook her head closing her eyes, turned around and walked away. She needed to be away from him and his infinite quotes. Most of which she didn't recognize, having done poorly in the subjective art of the english language in school. When there was something that needed saying, Sara chose the straight-forward approach, whereas Grissom waxed poetic from people long dead who seemed to have spoken a totally different form of english than the one currently in mode. Never to be caught with his pants down, he chose the circuitous route of another's words and that with a sideways glance at the recipient, never managing to actually look into the eyes.
On that ground, Sara and Grissom were like night and day. He couldn't handle her straightforwardness, and she couldn't understand his aspersions. It that aspect, they seemed to be at odds end. Which was odd in that there was an unmistakable attraction between them which seemed to draw their eyes to each other – but only when they other was distracted so as not to be aware. Or when it caused them to work together, their silent personal language aiding them in maneuvering the crime scene with nary a word spoken, seeming to just know what each needed to do and where to go. It was uncanny to witness such a silent dance, as though only they could hear the music which guided their steps. The nexus which bound them to each other seemed tenuous on many days when they seemed to exist in their own separate worlds and barely a word or a solitary glance was shared and the tension could choke the breath from the most stanch person.
Nevertheless, the music played on and the dance never completely ceased even when the steps seemed too slow for their to be any movement. Still they danced on, to the rhythm of their own beat.
Sara was walking down the hall, her heels clickety-clacketing on the tile floor in her fervour to put distance between them. Just another step in their dance: the stepping away from each other, only to return a moment later with either zestful high steps or slow lingering drags of the feet. Those around them tended to simply stay back during the dance, not wanting to be incidental interferences.
Grissom watched her walk away, a puzzled expression adorning his face and twisting his features into a scowl and pulling his lips into a wrinkled interpretation of an crotchety old man's. His eyes burned with a fire that rarely dimmed and was especially bright when in her presence. Now they fired again, though this time a hint of exasperating anger flared in it.
Though they tried to synchronize their steps in this dance, there always seemed to be someone's toes being stepped on and the pain drove them apart again and again. It was a wonder, after all this time, that they hadn't learned the steps enough to avoid causing pain. But alas, it was not yet meant to be or so it seemed.
With an exasperated sigh, Grissom turned on his heels and walked the other way toward his office. Paperwork needed filing. For a man with such a broad spectrum of knowledge, to not share it was akin to allowing it to rot and degenerate. But the sharing attributes of a good teacher had not been bestowed upon this man and as such his abilities to teach were not quite what was expected. As such, his pupils seemed to fail at grasping the tenuous extensions of his wry intelligence. Sara had been that student these days, always floundering around like a fish out of water whenever he'd tried to get close to her. And now she had walked away again. He sat in his chair, glasses on his desk and nose between fingers rubbing the sensitive area attempting to stem the imminent migraine. God, this was so exasperating! It was times like these that he wished he'd spent a little more time with people and less time with books, learning more how to socialize and read their signals. Cause lord knew, he was shit at it!
A heavy moan escaped his lips and he leaned back in the chair, his head falling back, his eyes closed against the glare of the overhead lights. Breathing deeply, he tried to force his shoulders to relax and quit constricting those vital arteries that could cause the blood vessels in the head to throb painfully in time with his heart.
How could he have done that? How could he have resorted to archaic quotes when she was right there in front of him just waiting for those words to come tumbling from his lips. How long had she been standing there, in front of him, patiently waiting, smiling, her eyes twinkling in that ever knowing gleam of underfelt reciprocity of love? Another loud moan was heard in the confines of his cluttered office. Why was it so hard for him to just admit it, not just to himself but to her as well? Why were the words so hard to verbalize? His throat would constrict at the mere thought of the possibility of acknowledging his feelings. His heart would race; his skin would get clammy and itch; and the sudden urge to just leave would become overpowering and at that moment he usually made some flimsy excuse and disappear again. Away to hide and catch his breath and berate himself once again for such a cowardly display of fear.
He sat forward in his chair, rubbing his hands on his pants, and took a deep breath. This was ridiculous, he told himself again. Something needed to happen. He was the man, was he not? Therefore it was incumbent upon him to make the first move. He was fairly certain she had feelings for his as well: he had felt them when they were close and she would lean in even closer, many times allowing her body to touch and rest against his – which only served to send his heart fluttering and cause the air to thicken and become hot and breathing became difficult. Maybe it was only him and she was really only trying to get a better look and was unaware of how she affected him so deeply.
He closed his eyes. Such possibilities, he argued with himself. So many possibilities and he wanted to act on one of them, the one that said she had feelings for him as well. And people thought performing such difficult tricks as making an elephant disappear or climbing the highest mountain in the world was difficult. They must have forgotten the absolute fear that gripped the soul when one was considering laying one's heart out for perusal, consideration and either acceptance or rejection. It was one of the most arduous tasks a person had to do in life, if one wanted to feel a love requited.
He needed to find her, before the energy that had suddenly enveloped him dissipated.
~*~
Sara had retreated to the computer room and was busy perusing the files that scrolled along the screen. Her keen eyes caught the relevant information before the file disappeared off screen. Her right hand rested lightly on the mouse moving it just enough to do its business. Her left hand, on the other hand, drummed a staccato rhythm on the desk – her foot joining in for good measure. A coffee cup sat beside her untouched, although the empty few that scattered the rest of the desk spoke otherwise about its relevance at this moment. The hand reached out, grabbed the cup and brought it to her lips, all the while her eyes never wavering from the screen. The ability to drink hot coffee while scanning files was born out of necessity and perfected over many ruined keyboards.
She sat totally engrossed in her activity unaware that a pair of eyes watched her from the shadows of the window. Grissom's temerity was beginning to falter: if she could loose herself so easily in work then maybe her feelings didn't run as deep as he thought, or hoped.
Something caught her eye and she looked up – and straight at him. Their eyes locked, questions in hers and fear in his. Unable to simply walk away again without appearing even more the fool, Grissom took a deep breath, turned the corner and came into the darkened room, grabbing the chair closest to her.
He glanced at the many coffee cups. "Enough coffee?"
Sara's rigid stance bespoke a quiet strength and a sense of resignation. "Yeah. It's a requirement of the job."
"Hmm."
The silence that descended over them was almost palpable. Grissom looked down at his hands, at the computer screen, into the room and then back at his hands. Sara, meanwhile, kept her eyes on him and simply watched and waited.
"Is there something I can do for you?" She asked, making him look at her again.
He swallowed. "Uh" Oh god, how to start Hey Sara, I love you, wanna go for supper some time?
Sara turned in her seat so her whole body faced him, forcing him to speak by giving him her full attention. If there was something that he wanted to say, then by golly it was going to be said, she thought.
Grissom stumbled over some words, twisting his hands in his lap and avoiding her gaze. Sara leaned forward, bending her head so as to catch his eye. "Grissom?"
He sighed and looked at her. And then winced.
Sara sat back in her chair and with a sigh turned back to her computer screen effectively pushing him away.
"Uh, Sara –."
"Just say it!" She spun around again and glared at him, confusion and frustration marring her features.
"I – I wish I could"
"'you wish you could' why can't you? What's so hard about it?"
Grissom once again looked down at his hands. To look into her eyes at this time was robbing him of his senses. It was getting hard to catch his breath and his heart pounded in chest, though he couldn't figure out if it was for nervousness or that she was so close to him once again.
Sara stood up grabbing some files. "Look, I have work to do."
Grissom looked up at her. She was leaving. He hadn't spoken quickly enough and now she was leaving. An ominous thought intruded, if he didn't do something soon, she would leave him forever. And it wouldn't be just a leave of absence but most likely a termination of employment form waiting for him on his desk one morning.
His lips moved but no sound came out and then she was around him and gone from his sight. He stood and spun around. "Sara! Wait. Please."
Sara turned around at the door, her head slowly coming around to look at him. And then she shook it and sighed. "For what?"
"For"
"For what, Grissom?"
"For me?" the words came out small and pathetic to even his failing hearing.
"For you."
"Yes."
"Why?"
She was standing by the door staring at him, her eyes challenging him to just do it. He was standing in the darkness of the room, his hands wringing each other in an effort not to touch his glasses. His hands needed to stay out of this.
"Because because I'm asking you to."
"You're asking me to Geez Grissom! How many times to I have to do whatever it is you ask of me? How many times before you give me what I'm asking?! I came to Vegas – cause you asked me to. I stayed here – cause you asked me to. I stayed again – cause you asked me to. I mean, what the devil is a plant supposed to mean anyway?!?"
Grissom looked down. "I – I'm not good with words, Sara. You know that."
"Bullshit."
His eyes shot up. Bullshit?
"'Since I met you'??"
The hockey rink he remembered. "Well they tend to come out when I'm not expecting them to. And when I want them to come out – like now – they don't."
Sara snorted and went to turn away.
"Give me a chance Sara, please."
"Why?"
"Christ! Why do you have to make this so hard? I'm trying Sara!"
"Not hard enough. If you have something to say to me, Grissom, just spit the damn words out!" And then she was gone, around the corner and out of his sight.
Grissom stood in the room, mouth hanging open, hands at side, wondering what had just happened. How had they devolved into yet another argument?
~*~
Sara sat in the breakroom, leafing madly through a magazine, the pages flying over with such force that half of them were now ripped from the spine. She didn't appear to notice this as she went on flipping and ripping pages.
A shadow appeared in the doorway and that little part in Sara that honed in on Grissom's proximity sent up signals that caused her body to tense for no apparent reason. Her tenseness confused her. Their moment in the computer room had been odd, to say the least. She knew he was trying to say something, and hoped it was what she wanted to hear. There was the way he was looking at her, and not looking at her, and the way his voice had cracked as he had tried to speak. But there was no way she was going to make it easy for him. Not after three years of waiting and hoping and leaning into him those times. She knew he knew how she felt. I mean, how could he not know? He'd have to blind and deaf not to notice.
"Sara."
His quietly commanding voice brought her head up, the magazine dropping to her lap. He was standing in the room, just in the doorway. His hands hung by his side, but his eyes were boring into hers, pulling strength from her.
"Grissom?"
He swallowed and came into the room to sit beside her on the couch, far enough away so as not to intrude on her personal space. He needed to stay away from her to do this.
Taking a deep breath, he let it out in a sentence spoken so low and with such emotion, she wasn't quite sure she'd heard him correctly. "I'm going deaf."
Sara sat and stared at him, processing his words and their meaning. And then her mind traveled back over time to various instances where his actions had seemed odd, only now they took on a clearer meaning.
Grissom brought his head up and caught her eyes. Only it wasn't what he thought he'd see. There was no pity, no fear, nothing but acceptance.
"You're going deaf." She said as though to repeat the words allowed them to sink in further and become a part of their reality.
"Yes."
Sara nodded her head. "Uhhow?"
"Otosclerosis."
Sara bit her lip as her mind tumbled over the word deciphering its meaning. "A gradual decline in hearing due to"
"the stapes slowly stopping functioning."
Sara nodded her head again and sighed. "Is this a permanent-no-turning-back sorta thing?"
Grissom's lips pursed. "Not really."
Sara's eyebrows rose in question.
"Umm, there is an operation that might help, but it's not a definite."
His tone caused her mind to jump. "You're thinking of not doing it."
He looked away. "My mother was deaf. She lived a good life. A part of me feels like I'd be betraying her if I didn't accept my own deafness."
Sara considered his words. "I didn't know that about your mother."
The silence that befell them was fraught with the unspoken desires of two people stuck in their own conundrum: Grissom with his deafness and Sara with wanting to let him make his own mind and yet also wanting him to take the chance that he might continue hearing.
Sara nodded her head slowly. "Okay."
Grissom stared her. "That's it?"
"Yeah."
"You're not going to try and talk me into getting the surgery?"
"It's your life. What I want has no bearing in this decision." It was stated so calmly and so matter-of-factly that Grissom had to keep himself from almost literally exploding with frustration. Didn't she care?
Grissom got up from the couch and headed for the door.
"I take it the conversation's over?" Sara asked watching him leave.
He stopped and turned around. As he looked at her, his mind ran over the possibilities of her words. He wanted to feel hope, but there was also this nagging feeling of despair that she didn't really care one way or another. He'd been a fool to assume that she might care. But there was one last straw he could grasp at. "What do you want?"
"What?"
"You said that what you wanted had no bearing in my decision. I'm asking you what you want?" he was taking small steps closer to her. His voice had taken on a subtle tone of what? And he was looking at her with he was staring at her with such intensity until he crouched down in front of her. His proximity and his voice and the look in his eyes was enough to unsettle Sara in a manner she hadn't felt for a long time. Her heart thudded in her chest and she strove to control the random thoughts and images passing through her head, all of them containing Grissom in some form or another.
She attempted a look of laissez-faire not wanting to entertain such titillating thoughts. She swallowed hard. "I want nothing Grissom." But the words didn't come out right. They sounded hollow and unfelt. She could barely hear them through the rushing of the blood in her ears; her chest was beginning to feel dangerously tight.
She regretted the words when she saw the deflated look on his face. In trying to quell her own raging desires and attempting to appear nonchalant she had inadvertently caused him pain, though she couldn't fathom how that could be. Surely he didn't He swayed away from her and then stood up.
"What did you want me to say?" she asked him quietly.
He shook his head. "Nothing."
The utter confusion of the situation was warring thin on her already frayed nerves and she fairly flew off the couch toward him. "Grissom! You come in here and announce to me that you're going deaf and that you might not have the surgery that might correct it – it surely won't make it worse – and you expect me to make the decision for you?"
"No. I don't want you to make the decision for me Sara. I just"
"Just what? Just what, Grissom? God, I cannot understand you!" She spun on her heels and gave him her back.
"There's nothing to understand." His coldness stung her like a knife.
She turned to him. "You're right. You just live your life the way you want it and you don't give a care to the people around you and how they might feel about it. You live in your little cocoon and the rest of just sit back and watch you. You have a chance your mother didn't have and you don't want to take it! You know, there's a time to respect the ways of yore and then there's a time to look to the future and do things differently because they're better!! I really don't think you're mother's gonna mind so much if you can continue hearing even if she couldn't!"
"What the hell do you know about my mother?!"
"I know that she raised a fine, upstanding man who strives to do the best and be the best and never rests until it's done. I know that she'd be damn proud of you. And I have a feeling she'd be disappointed if you threw most of it away because you're afraid that you might be insulting her by saying you'd rather hear the world and experience it with all five senses even if she couldn't. She lived her life, now live yours!"
"I'm trying to!!"
"Do it. Live it. Take the godamn surgery and live it, Grissom I dare you."
Grissom's eyes blazed at Sara. He was angry, but he didn't know why. Where had this anger come from? Because Sara had challenged him to live, effectively assuming that he wasn't? She was accusing him of not living. Well geez, just what the hell had he been doing all these years if he wasn't living?
Existing, came the silent answer. I'm existing. Merely existing. Not living. Just being. That's not enough. How did that happen? When did I stop living? How do I start living? Oh god his hand went to his face and his fingers rubbed his temples; he sighed.
"What do I do?"
"You live."
"I feel so dead."
"I know."
He spun around. "How do you know?!"
"Because you act it."
He stared at her, his eyes beseeching answers from hers.
"Where do I start?"
"I don't know." She came to stand before him. "But you're not alone, Grissom. You never were."
Grissom bit the inside of his lip, chewed on it for a while before turning once again to look at Sara. His eyes searched hers as his mind struggled with the words. He closed his eyes against the overwhelming anxiety that gripped him. His eyes blinked to keep at bay what he knew threatened to make known. It'd been such a long time that he's cried, he didnt' know what kind of deluge would burst forth. And he wasn't about to let it happen now, here.
"What's your pulse at now?" came her quiet voice.
"Uh not good."
Her lips curled into a small smile.
"I'm getting old, Sara. Too old for some things. I think I waited too long."
"Some things wait longer than others." Sara offered, her eyes saying more than the mere words.
He searched her eyes and he saw things were they really there? His hand reached out and touched hers; her fingers wrapped around his and he could feel the slight trembling. "Do they?"
"Yes"
Grissom swallowed. "'Cause that's good to know."
"Is it?"
"Yes, because it's good."
"Ah, I see." And she smiled.
Grissom bit his lip again and looked away, pondering his thoughts before turning back to her. Her other hand came up and rested on his face and a memory came to him with such force the breath caught in his throat. The smile was gone from Sara's face, replaced with a look of passion so intense. "I meant it then and I mean it now." came the quiet words affirming his hopes. As he stared into her eyes – remembering how they looked that night, and realizing they looked like that now – he knew she felt the same way he did. It was as though a wall fell away painlessly, after being painfully held in place for so long. The path was clear now and he could follow it.
Her face was drawing nearer and he could feel her breath on his skin, her thumb rubbing his cheek so lightly. Her eyes searched his for some sign that this was right and good and when he leaned in toward her she knew. And the gap was closed as their lips brushed against each others'. Eyes closed and skin rippled with electricity and his hand was on her face, keeping her there. It was a simple kiss yet full of possibilities. And it affirmed what they both had felt for such a long time and never knew it was reciprocated.
Sara pulled away from him, noting how his eyes took a bit longer than hers to open, but when they did she was astounded by the intensity in them, how the blue had darkened to such degrees as she had never seen them. It took her breath away, and pulled her to him again in another embrace, this one with more passion that the previous. Her arm snaked around to allow her fingers to get lost in his peppered curls as his hand slid down her back and pulled her to him. She moaned in response to this sudden display of intense passion and gave herself to him, her mouth opening and her tongue teasing his to join hers in the age old mating dance. And he groaned in response, giving in to her request and deepening the embrace.
It was so much more than he could ever have imagined. Feeling her body against his, his arms wrapped around her and holding her so tightly, feeling her breasts heaving against his chest and her pulse racing in her neck. His own heart joined hers and it took everything in his being to pull away from her lest they should find themselves in an extremely compromising position on the couch in the breakroom.
Their breathing ragged, their eyes partially closed, their hands still caressing the other's body, they willed themselves to return to reality. As their eyes opened once again – still passionately cloudy – they drew back and caught their breaths.
"Now that's living." Sara said with a grin.
Grissom chuckled in spite of himself. "You know, I don't ever want to not be able to hear your voice."
Sara's thumb rubbed the stubble of his cheek. "I want you to live."
"I am. I will."
She kissed him once again, a small one as though to seal the words.
"Do you wanna go out for dinner some time?" Grissom asked her.
Now Sara really smiled, a gap-toothed smile that reached her eyes and poured her soul out. "Yes, Grissom. I would."
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Author's Notes: I'm not quite sure exactly what is Otosclorosis, I am just hazarding a guess based on what I remember from the show. If anyone feels offended if there are any mistakes, just email me with or without the correct information and I'll endeavour to correct any mistakes. Thanks! :)
Author's Notes... again!: I still haven't figured out why the formatting on ff.net is refusing to coorperate with me. I really hate the way it looks... but the story is there, it's readable and hopefully understandable.
Copyright © 2003 by Anansay