If Sara had glanced at her reflection a second time before walking into the lab, she would have been pretty surprised. Her hair was a halo around her head, still fluffy from being in a ponytail, and her tears had left their mark on her face not as a red, sniffly mess, as she had expected, but left her looking drawn and delicate looking, a look that became her. If she smiled, the picture would be complete, but Sara Sidle was in no mood to smile tonight. She stalked into the building, heading straight for Grissom's office. Sara walked into the room and stood in front of Grissom's desk, her arms crossed, waiting for him to notice her presence. No lingering in doorways for her tonight, Gil Grissom was about to get a piece of her mind.

The man in question had indeed noticed her standing there, and instead of acknowledging her presence, he pretended he was focusing on the work in front of him. The phone call from Nick had alerted him that Sara was very angry, and the impatient tapping of her foot along with her combative stance told him that the short drive had not done much to calm her down. He didn't want to keep her waiting much longer but he had no earthly idea what to say to her. Grissom sighed. Why was he so unable to think around her? His mind would go blank and then when he finally figured out what to say, it was usually the wrong thing...

"Am I bothering you?" After standing there for a full five minutes waiting, Grissom's sigh had been the straw that broke the camel's back. How dare he ask Catherine to wake her up on-her-day-off and order her to a crime scene, only to demand to know why she was there? And now he refused to even speak to her?!

He finally looked up, attempting to appear surprised to see her there, an action that Sara saw through immediately.

"Don't you dare even pretend you didn't know I was standing here, Grissom, its childish and rude!"

"I was not pretending anything!" Her anger had pierced through his composure, and he could feel his pulse starting to race.

"How could you just sit there, knowing I was waiting for you--"

"You could have said something, Sara." He interrupted her tensely. Grissom ignored the fact that, had his body not naturally and automatically known it was Sara standing there, he might not have heard her if she had spoken to her. The surgery, although successful, was still healing, and his doctor had warned him not to assume it was failing if he had some random lapses.

"You know, I never thought of you as stupid."

Her comment rendered him speechless. He'd assumed she was upset at his taking Nick off of the case and working with her on it instead, although he realized now that could not be the case, as she didn't know, and no one had told her. Now he realized she was furious at him, personally. He stared at her with wide-eyed shock as she went on.

"But you seem to be assuming that *I* am stupid, and the only conclusion I can come to is that you're an idiot." All the pent-up anger and frustration had come pouring out of her in the form of that one sentence, and after she spoke Sara was just about as shocked as Grissom was. She couldn't believe that she had spoken like that to him--he was still her boss.

Grissom stood up, having felt less in charge with Sara standing at his desk, glowering at him. Standing up didn't help much, however, and after quite a few tense moments of a staring competition, he broke eye contact and walked over to the door.

'I can't believe he thinks he can just ask me to leave! Who does he think he is...' Sara ignored the answer (your supervisor), and was composing a truly vicious thing to say to him when he shut the door and turned around to face her. His mind raced through all possibilities to explain her fury--his rejection of her dinner invitation, his refusal to turn the model case over to her and Nick--even her questioning his professionalism regarding her application for promotion. None of them could quite explain what had tipped the scales of her anger. He looked at her again, as she stood there, arms crossed, eyebrow raised as if to challenge him to a shouting contest. He searched for the exact right thing to say, and, as usual, his mind was a blank. "What is wrong with you?" was always a bad idea, as was "What's gotten into you lately?" although those were the two questions he most wanted to ask. Sara would have been slightly gratified to learn that he knew better than to go down either of those roads. The trouble was, Grissom not only had no roads to go down, he barely had a sidewalk. He settled on an old stand-by.

"Sara," he paused, clearly hoping she would speak and save him the effort. Sara had no such intention. In her angered state, watching Grissom squirm was more fun than getting a double issue of her favorite forensics journal in the mail on her day off. Well, almost.

While standing there waiting for him to form some sort of coherent thought, Sara's mind wandered. Forcing herself to stare at him--while a luxury she scarcely allowed herself to enjoy--was becoming more and more difficult, but she was determined to stand her ground. Forcing her facial expression into a mask of skepticism and rage, Sara's inner thoughts were far less menacing. She noticed that he'd let his hair grow a little bit longer, letting the curls she so fanaticized about wrapping around her finger show. She observed that his forehead was displaying a previously undiscovered crease, no doubt an indication of stress. Most of all, and to her complete exasperation with herself, she noticed that he was completely adorable when he was confused. This argument was getting nowhere, however, and she decided it was time to stoke it a little more.

"I know my own name, Grissom."

The woman would simply not yield. Not to mention the fact that she was even more beautiful tonight than normal, not that he thought that was possible. Despite her steely-eyed expression, and ready-for-action body language, she looked almost vulnerable, in a damsel-in-distress sort of way. The hair she normally kept in a clip or wrestled into straight locks was curling gently in a halo around her face, and as he maintained eye contact with her in their battle of wills, he noticed that her eyes were red as though she'd been crying. 'Damn her for making me feel so protective around her!' he thought to himself.

'Damn him for making me want to forgive him!' Sara shut it out, all the familiar feelings of longing and admiration, and let herself feed on her anger like one dehydrated from a long time spent in the desert without water. In a way, that was exactly what she felt like--as though she were lost in the desert, surviving only on tiny drops of hope rained from the cloud that was Grissom. Except they had become too few and far between, and if she didn't do something soon, she'd die of starvation. It was time to take action.