So many unanswered why's…that I still have today. It wasn't just about the case but that was all I wanted her to surmise at the time.
Still, why did I call her? She lived in San Francisco, I could have called any one. Of course, I know how good she is at what she does and I say that without bias.
I also know that no matter what, I care about them, each of my personnel for their individual selves and for the group. Warrick deserved someone as good as Sara to look in on it.
So why did I ask her to stay after that? I asked her, without hesitation, to move to Las Vegas, to give up her life a state away for…me?
I rationalized it then too. 'For the group' I'd said. We needed her.
I fooled them all and myself for a time. I needed her. It was like breathing after having your chest constricted for years, the first time I saw her. Like I could breathe again and I never wanted to let that feeling go.
But the biggest why of that day was…why did she stay? Why did she agree to such an outrageous request?
She asked me to dinner once, just to see what would happen. Why? Better yet…why in the hell didn't I agree?
Maybe I'd found, in my perfect plan to keep her, a flaw. I was her boss now, there were rules to be recognized, to be followed. I cornered myself.
Brilliant Grissom.
All these, his thoughts, while he sat at his desk, wishing she were still across from him, speaking to him beautiful words made so by the fact that they were hers and he could hear them.
He found his jacket in a daze and went out of his office, past Greg and Nick and Warrick, answering no questions put his way. This had happened to him once, when he had been drawn to her so forcefully that he walked without idea as to where he was going and still he found her.
Gorgeous in the stale streetlight, an angel out of place.
Now he had to find her again and he knew she wouldn't be in the lab, despite her love for overtime. So he walked, out of the garage to see her vehicle gone and his chest tightened.
The strip was still bustling, as it always was, but the rowdy quality had left the crowds of tourists, now intent on breakfast and sightseeing before true Vegas awoke again. Like a ghost, he moved through them, past buildings familiar and faces foreign until he found himself on a road he'd never been consciously on before, though he must have driven it at least once. The road he could've cared less about, there was a shop a ways up from where he stood. Coffee. Good idea, his brain told him.
As though the thing pushing him to find her eased for a moment, he walked slowly, bow-leggedly, to the small shop.
His usual observations for a new setting were forgone; he just wanted coffee, which the young blonde behind the counted readily handed him. Once at his table, a sort of tunnel vision overtook him and he could only focus on a spot on the table in front of him.
The guy onstage wasn't bad, he had a nice enough voice for seven in the morning. Sara's eyes however, were fixed more so on how his fingers glided across the fret board and how his guitar purred with every strum. A burgeoning musician herself, she respected how hard it was to play the instrument, let alone sing while doing so.
She took another sip of her coffee and relaxed that much more. Here where there was no him, where there no confessions of the horrors that might be, no confessions of things that should never be said for so many reasons.
"…So many damn reasons," she whispered to herself.
On her way to her favorite coffee shop, she'd thought a great deal about him, about how exactly she loved him. It was something bordering on hero worship, a deep love for something that couldn't be soiled. Grissom, his love for his work, his passion for it, couldn't be spoiled.
Even by a girl. It bothered her that the very thing she should love him for would be what made him hold back.
Shaking her head, she looked down to see the absence of coffee in her mug and grumbled slightly. But when she got up to get more, she was startled by him, across the room, staring at his table.
She quickly decided that more coffee would come first, then Grissom. When she sat down across from him, she startled him out of his thoughtless state. "I think, in this case, you actually have to go first, Gris."
He didn't smile because he normally didn't but felt an ease wash over him and the grip on his chest release. "I, uh, I wanted to find you."
She smiled, "well good job, CSI Grissom. Here I am."
Still, he didn't smile, merely leaned in ever so little. "You're beautiful."
The smile on her face was replaced with the look someone gets while hearing about a relative in the hospital. But she waited, waited for words she wanted to hear from his lips, wanted to see him form and struggle with to get them just right.
"…Stunning, striking…" He laughed now, more of an almost bitter chuckle, "you know, all those practiced words flew outt'a my head when you spoke to me last night…it made me wonder if there were words to describe you rightfully in the first place."
She looked down at her coffee. She'd heard Grissom speak softly before, heard him say things that made her heart jump, just a little. But this was surreal. This was a downright confession. Nothing abstract, nothing evasive.
And his eyes had never seemed so blue.
"I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since Holly Gribbs' case-."
"That's enough Grissom, at least…at least for tonight, morning…today." She sipped her coffee again.
He nodded and still, he kept his gaze on her. "I'm scared Sara."
"Of what?" She asked simply, somehow slipping into a friendlier, less tense way with him.
He bowed his head for a moment but quickly looked back up at her. "Of loosing…everything."
They sat together for a long time after that, talking about little inanities, laughing together, sharing gazes not permitted before, even just friendly gazes. And they smiled at one another, they smiled because it felt good to share just that much again.
I stand with a blank expression now
And I can't believe myself
Would someone tell me
How did I get here
I am walking
Changing slowly
I am chasing
Climbing closer
I know that I'll never be alone
You will never let me go
You are my anchor
Hold my hand while I'm sinking in the sand
No one else could understand
You are my anchor
-Anchor, Lifehouse
I don't think I'm even close to being done but it might take a while. God I love these two, The Beard Of Justice and Sara Sidle were made for each other.
