3. "My Life's Not Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows..."

"Drop dead, Grissom."

That had come through quite clearly. He had been unable to get her to slow down and stop turning away from him, but she had made a point of straightening up from the microscope to fix him with her fiery dark gaze as she addressed those words of dismissal to him.

Although Melissa's idea of a meeting with his group had worked out fairly well, better than she had led him to expect, the butterflies and angel choir had failed to make their appearance afterwards.

He had run into Bobby the lab tech in the hall on his way to talk to Sara; the same Bobby from whom he had abruptly walked away in mid-sentence, just before his extended disappearance.

Bobby was not part of the "inner circle;" he had neither the length of acquaintance nor the familial feeling for Grissom that the night shift CSIs did. Consequently, he was not ready to extend the same mercy that they had granted—after making him work very hard for it.

Very hard indeed.

"I don't know, Griss," Warrick had said, shaking his head. The fun of playing with the new technological toy had faded quickly; Nick and Greg were still passing it back and forth, taking turns at the built-in games while its owner was otherwise occupied, but Warrick had stopped him before he could declare the meeting over and hand out the thankfully sparse assignments for that night.

Their friendship had been on tenterhooks, anyway; the sequence of events culminating with the forced closure of the youth center had strained it almost to the breaking point.

"I mean, I just can't reconcile that you couldn't say something to us."

Grissom discerned the deeper layers of meaning and substituted "me" in place of that last plural pronoun. He wasn't the only one to feel less than comfortable discussing feelings on the personal level.

"I have no problem at all understanding why you didn't want this to become general knowledge," Warrick was saying. "But, man, you know all—all—of our secrets. You were always ready to put yourself on the line to save our butts. But now we see it doesn't work both ways. What was all that help you gave us, charity or something?"

Nick had overheard his friend's comments and was now looking intently at their boss, the allure of the BlackBerry forgotten by him as well. His expression communicated that he agreed completely with Warrick, for once.

Grissom's first mental response was angry and defensive. He hadn't been the one who had let personal vices and relationships cause messy conflicts in the workplace, or gotten into sticky situations from which he would need extrication. Neither of them had any right to accuse him of being condescending.

And yet, he had to acknowledge that being left out of the loop was unsettling; and it felt pretty lousy to be made to feel untrustworthy by someone you thought respected you. They weren't ready to be made to see that it wasn't really about them at all—that understanding would come after the feelings of hurt and betrayal were worked out. He hadn't needed to be told that—though Melissa had mentioned it near the end of their session.

He looked Warrick in the eye; in response, the gaze of the other softened in memory of a happier past.

"As I said before, my reasons for not confiding in anyone had nothing to do with the regard I feel for any of you. Can you accept that? Think of us as being even now," he suggested.

Warrick's eyes turned sharply to him again at the painful recall of his inadvertent involvement in the self-destruction of his old coach, then dropped as he accepted the gift his boss and mentor was offering.

Grissom had felt wrung out and battered by the time he had retrieved the pager and handed out the assignments—nothing spectacular that night, except for a rape case that he gave to Catherine. He was craven enough to want to avoid anything that might set Sara off. Besides, there had been mention of blood spatters at the scene. Wasn't that Cath's area of expertise, anyway?

Why, then, did he still feel as if he had deliberately spared himself trouble, at the expense of both CSIs?

Well, if missy hadn't slammed her way out of the meeting, he might have dredged up the courage to give her the case. He comforted himself with that reflection.

And now, of all people to nearly collide with in the hall…

The look that Bobby gave him left him in no doubt about the former's feelings about being treated in a way that had felt dismissive and high-handed.

"Sorry, Bobby," Grissom had said. He had let the deeper meaning, significance that went beyond the mere fact of carelessly placing himself in the path of the other, be discernible in his tone.

"Uh huh," was Bobby's only response. His eyes evaded Grissom's, but not before Grissom got a good look at the bewilderment and hurt reflected there. The tech continued on his way without a backward glance.

Grissom decided that he would have to work out some sort of appeasement later; what few emotional resources he had left needed to be available for dealing with one very pissed-off CSI—wherever she was.

She was bending over a microscope in one of the labs when he found her. Intent upon her work, she didn't notice him right away; he allowed himself the painful luxury of observing the way her seal-brown hair fell around her shoulders; she seemed to have been letting it grow lately.

She finally looked up from the lens in order to change the slide, and the game was up. She had spotted him. The wariness crept back into her expression, the lab's fluorescents making her face look pale and pinched.

"Something you need from me?" she had queried after a moment in which neither one had anything to say.

"I'd like to know why you were so upset earlier, why you couldn't stay for the meeting," he replied. Oh, why couldn't he keep that note of disapprobation out of his voice? He knew she would be infuriated by it, but it had slipped out anyway—beyond his control, it seemed.

All she had done was glare at him and turn back to her work.

"Sara…" he had persisted.

She had snapped out something curt while again bent over the microscope, but though he could hear the occasional vowel sound, the sense was completely missing.

"Sara…"

This time his tone was pleading. It was only in her presence that he would have let that happen.

It only merited him a look that she might have given one of his cockroaches upon its escape from the confinement of his office and subsequent appearance on the lapel of her immaculate white lab coat. She was still speaking as she turned away to retrieve a bottle from a shelf behind her. Of course, whatever she had been saying was lost.

"Sara, please. If you're speaking to me, you're wasting your breath. I can't converse this way anymore."

This phrasing caught her attention; it made her stop and look at him, surprise in her cappuccino eyes. He now had her interest, at least.

And then he had blown the whole thing. Mentally replaying the whole scene, he really wished he could have kicked himself, as the old saying went—hard enough to have made him think before speaking. But having Sara in proximity seemed to have brain-scrambling effects on him.

"As I explained earlier to the others at the meeting…"

And that was when she had abruptly (and deservedly) consigned him to Hades.

He felt like an old man as he made his way back to his office; or, at least, he felt like one of the walking wounded.

This would never do, he counseled himself. He could not cocoon himself in his office for the next eight-and-a-half hours remaining of his shift—not to mention the rest of his more than 20 years until retirement. As a matter of fact, he would not be trapped in the lab for another moment, no matter what he had promised Covallo—or anyone else. He needed some air. He had a right to work like anyone else. Taking up the information for the scene of the home invasion he had been going to give Sara, he headed toward the parking lot and his Tahoe.