THE MOST PERFECT SLEEP
AUTHOR'S NOTES/DISCLAIMER: I don't own Grissom and Sara or CSI or anything to do with the show. The title comes from 'Hunger Artist'. All constructive feedback/flattery very much appreciated.
***
Sara stared through the glass into the interrogation room, watching as Brass and Grissom arrested Ed Kingsley for the rape and murder of his girlfriend. Solving crimes was an intellectual puzzle for her and finally putting the last piece in place was the ultimate high. That didn't mean dealing with death and horror night after night was something she could detach herself from. Providing the victim's families with some kind of answer was what kept her going. It was her personal payback to the world for all the suffering she'd seen.
She knew that the face of Kingsley's girlfriend Amy was one which would join the faces which paraded through her all too frequent nightmares. Susanna Kirkwood, Pamela Adler, Kaye Shelton and the victims of the Strip Strangler were always there as Sara's unconscious mind ran through events which had happened to bring the women – girls, in the case of Susanna and Amy – to the attention of her shift.
Kingsley seemed more concerned with his arrest that with the fact that Amy's parents had just had to bury their 17 year old daughter. He didn't seem to have any remorse, didn't seem to hear Amy's screams or watch her die before his eyes. Sara glared at him, knowing he couldn't see her. Amy Oliver's life and death would haunt her parents and Sara while Kingsley languished in prison. Throwing him in prison would stop him hurting another girl, but it wouldn't make him pay for what he'd done. Not really. Watching as Brass escorted Kingsley from the room, knowing that her part was over until he came to trial, Sara wondered just how lucky she really was.
***
Sara was alone in the locker room pulling on her jacket when Grissom wandered in. "Hey."
"Good job on the Oliver case, Sara."
She looked at him, rather startled. Grissom didn't seem to believe in complimenting her these days. "Thanks."
"They can't find him innocent. Evidence is stacked him."
"Yes, but it won't bring Amy Oliver back." She hadn't meant to say that. Amy Oliver would come back in her dreams.
"No," said Grissom, quietly, thoughtfully. "You're in the wrong line of work if you want to do that."
Grabbing her bag, Sara began to head for the door, but Grissom was in her way. "I hope you're going home to sleep."
'Oh yes, of course. I'm going home to have the nightmares I always have after rape cases. I'll hear them all screaming and begging and see their faces. Then I'll wake up sweating and disoriented and either pop some sleeping pills or watch mindless TV until it's time to come back and deal with more violence.'
"Probably," she replied.
"Probably?" he raised one eyebrow. "Sara - "
"Since when did you care?" she interrupted him. He'd cared about her once; now he probably wouldn't notice if she dyed her hair blue. Unless, of course, it interfered with her work.
"Since I watched you go for almost 48 hours without sleep and work yourself to the point of exhaustion to get Ed Kingsley behind bars."
"It was the least I could do for Amy."
"You didn't even know her, Sara."
"I recognised her."
Grissom was staring at her. "Does this have anything to do with the Kirkland case?"
"Susanna Kirkland was a girl. Not a case." Sara abandoned the veneer of politeness and pushed past him. 'It's got more to do with me.'
***
Grissom watched Sara go, sincerely hoping she was going to sleep. Unbidden and unwelcome, an echo of her voice floated into his mind.
"Do you want to sleep with me?"
"Did you just say what I think you said?"
"That way, when I wake up in a cold sweat hearing the victim's screams, you can tell me it's nothing. It's just empathy."
Sara's voice merged with that of a homeless woman on the streets of Vegas. He remembered Cassie James all too clearly, and the conversation they'd had about finding the one thing you always needed. He'd asked what Cassie would do when she'd found the elusive thing. "Sleep," she'd answered, dreamily, walking away from him. "The most perfect sleep."
Grissom had never forgotten either conversation, but he'd never juxtaposed them before now. He knew Sara had spoken honestly about the way she slept and it had chilled him to the bone then. The victims stayed with him, too, but there was something about the way cases of violence against women got under her skin. It was his job to observe, in a way, and he'd observed Sara since he'd met her as a graduate student. From an intellectual point of view, Sara was a fascinating case study in a lot of things. From a human point of view, Grissom knew her as a woman who tried to conceal an affectingly vulnerable side behind an iron exterior. Sara was always somewhere in his mind. He thought he loved her and that was starting to scare him. He'd never really loved before and the books of poetry on his shelves didn't provide the key he needed to cope. So he pushed her away, which made her cross and him miserable.
Grissom scanned the locker room, trying to remember what he'd come in for. Coat. Right. He was going home, finally. They had Ed Kingsley locked up and young Amy Oliver was lying six feet below ground level, not even out of her teens. He shook his head and hoped Sara wasn't going to have nightmares.
***
"We need to talk."
"I thought you didn't do talking." Trying to put off the moment when she'd have to give into the exhaustion, Sara had been watching cable, and was still trying to get her mind around the idea of Gil Grissom standing in the doorway talking about talking.
"There's a first time for everything. Can I come in, Sara?"
"Uh, sure. Come in." She led him into her living room. "Coffee?"
"No thanks. Sara - "
"Yeah? You can sit down, you know."
"I'm all right. Sara - " He paused again, looking at her.
Sara, on the sofa, tucked her legs up under her body. "Gris, you're starting to scare me." She kept her voice light, but knew they had come to a point where one of them had to do something about their 'relationship', such as it was. For a moment, her brain leafed through the possibilities available to her: yelling at him, letting out all the frustration he'd forced on her; kicking him out and asking for a transfer to somewhere like New York or Miami; telling him she loved him and waiting for a reaction. None seemed particularly feasible, so, tossing them aside, she waited for him to build up the courage to say whatever it was he'd come to say.
"I'm sorry," he said, suddenly, his eyes on the floor.
"Oh."
"Yes. I've been... pushing you away, Sara. I've been scared."
Sara considered this. "What of?" she asked, quietly.
"Of you. Of the way I feel about you."
"And how's that?" It was taking every ounce of concentration she could milk from her exhausted mind to appear calm.
"I... care... about you." Like an embarrassed child, Grissom was still staring at the floor and shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Sara processed this remark. "Oh. I care about you, too. A lot. You know that."
"I know. I just... I've been running scared." He shrugged. "I am sorry, Sara."
Three minutes later, neither had spoken, and Grissom hadn't lifted his eyes from the floor.
"So... what happens now?" Sara asked quietly. "You walk out of here and everything goes on the way it always has? That's not what I want, Grissom."
He seemed relieved to be able to examine her feelings for a change. "So what do you want?"
"I've known you for nearly ten years. I want... I want more than what we've got now. I'm sick of being alone, waiting for you to notice me. To stop running. Grissom, just tell me if you're willing to give it a try... see what happens. I'm not going to wait for you forever. I can't. If you say no..."
"Then what?"
"I don't know. But we haven't got eternity, Gris. I think we've only got one more chance."
"'The grave's a fine and private place But none, I think, do there embrace.'"
"What?"
"Marvell. 'To His Coy Mistress'. I'm sorry. That may or may not have been appropriate."
"I'm not the one being coy." Sara had to repress a grin for reasons she did not entirely understand. She was exhausted, and, nightmares or no nightmares, she wanted to sleep.
"No, you're being honest. And what if I say yes? What then?"
"Then... we see what happens. I'm sick of being lonely. I've never met another man who understands me like you do. I probably never will. We could just give it a chance. It can't make things any worse."
Grissom took a deep breath. "Yes. You're not the only one who's sick of being alone."
A wave of relief swept Sara and she almost laughed aloud. Her emotions were playing havoc with her and she couldn't put it all down to PMT. "You can probably look at me now. Gris... come and sit down."
He sat, looking at her properly for the first time this evening. Sara was still trying to figure out what, exactly, had just gone on. It was like trying some new kind of experiment. 'Only I'd compare a relationship to a scientific experiment', she thought.
"I feel like we're starting some entirely new kind of experiment," Grissom muttered.
Sara stared at him, wildly. "I just had this totally bizarre thought that this was like an experiment – you know, 'see what happens' – and then I thought, no, I'm the only person who'd compare the two." She began to giggle and tried to frantically to stop herself. "I'm sorry."
"You're exhausted."
"That too." Managing to control her giggles, Sara looked at him again. This was certainly a very odd beginning to a relationship. "Why did you come here?"
"Cassie James."
"What?" Sara asked for the second time.
"You remember Cassie James?"
"Homeless woman, schizophrenic, former model, sister in the shopping cart?"
"She said something to me after we'd figured out how Ashleigh died. She said she was hunting, looking for something, and that the next thing she found could be the next thing she really needed. She said people didn't know what they needed until they found it, and that when she found whatever it was she needed she'd sleep the most perfect sleep. And I remembered what you said to me when we were working on Kaye Shelton's death, about waking up in a sweat hearing her screams. And then I thought... well... I didn't know I needed you until I met you. Then I figured we both needed something to sleep this most perfect sleep. I saw the way you looked when we were working on Amy Oliver's case last night and I just... I realised that there's so much sadness and sorrow in the world and... that we should take whatever chance of happiness we've got. I thought if I could maybe make you happy... then we'd both be happy... and we'd sleep the most perfect sleep."
That didn't make much sense, but Sara knew what he was getting at. She'd thought the same thing, over and over again. She and Grissom needed each other as a defense against the evils of life and the horrors they dealt with every day. "I know what you mean."
Grissom reached out and swept her hair behind her ear with one hand. He barely grazed her cheek, but her skin tingled from the touch of his rough, warm hand. "You're tired," he whispered.
"Yeah."
"Why aren't you in bed?"
"You're here."
"Before that."
Sara sighed. "Because sometimes if I'm really exhausted when I go to bed after closing a case, the nightmares aren't as bad." Grissom was the only person who had any idea that she had nightmares, the only person she'd ever hinted it to, probably the only person she'd ever admit it to.
"How often do you have them?"
"All the time during the bad cases. Otherwise, a couple of times a month, probably."
Grissom closed the distance between them on the sofa. Hesitantly, he put his arms around her. Sara felt herself sink into his warm body. Closing her eyes, she laid her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist. "What are the bad cases?"
"Rape. Domestic violence. Stuff like that." It was easier to talk about when he was so totally present yet she didn't have to look at him.
"When you said you recognised Amy... were you talking about Susanna Kirkland?"
Sara shook her head, remembering Susanna. "In a way... but mostly I was talking about myself."
Grissom sighed and kissed the top of her head, holding her tighter. "Oh, sweetheart," he whispered. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Squeezing the tears back, Sara shook her head again, realising he probably couldn't see it but not quite trusting her voice. "Not... not right now," she murmured. Grissom was holding her and rubbing her back and she just wanted to stay safe and warm in his arms rather than dredging up the painful memories of her past. She swallowed several times. "I think I'm going to fall asleep."
"Want to test Cassie's perfect sleep theory?"
Sara smiled. "Yes, please."
***
Grissom's best dreams tended to contain this element of Sara lying asleep in his arms. To make doubly sure that he wasn't having a dream, he shook his head several times and blinked. He was still watching Sara sleep, cuddled up to his chest, her head resting on his shoulder.
Trying not to think about what she'd said about recognising herself in Amy Oliver, Grissom brushed some loose strands of hair out of her face. She'd tell him when she was ready.
Closing his eyes again, Grissom breathed in the smell of Sara's shampoo. She was still sleeping and hadn't woken up with nightmares; he felt more at peace than he ever had. There was definitely something in Cassie's perfect sleep theory. What was more, Grissom knew he'd found the one thing he needed more than anything else.
THE END