Sara sighed, closing her eyes and slumping in defeat. The bag slung over her right shoulder fell down and caught around her wrist, bumping against the plastic case she was carrying. "What are you doing here?"
Grissom pushed himself off from the wall, hands in his pockets. "Thomas called me."
Dimly, she thought she ought to be angry, but she was too tired. Somewhere on the way home - and she probably shouldn't have been driving - she had calculated her last sleep as the hour and a half in the break room last night, and before that, the two hours between the end of the afternoon panels and the start of shift. It wasn't that much less than her normal sleep hours, but hour-long naps scattered throughout an extremely busy day didn't allow the body to get the kind of rest it needed to keep functioning. And hers seemed to finally have given up.
So she stared at him blankly. "So?"
She knew that stance all too well. She'd seen it dozens of times. He shuffled, stared at his feet, and then looked back at her tentatively. "He told me...about your case."
And Thomas had only just escaped from her short list. "Look, I'm really not up to anything more complex than unconsciousness right now. Can we do this later?" She pushed past him and unlocked her apartment.
He followed her inside. She'd shut the door. Hadn't she? Apparently not. Not good.
"What did you mean when you said we never should have gotten married?"
Sara really didn't think she could handle Grissom in a talkative mood. She slammed the evidence case and bag down on the coffee table and turned to look at him. "It's not really a sentence open to interpretation."
"I think it is."
Oh, God, she really couldn't deal with this right now. Her thick down parka joined the case and bag on the table, and she fell down on the couch heavily.
"I don't regret marrying you, Sara."
He said it so quietly she almost didn't hear it. And when she did hear it, she wished she hadn't heard it. She dropped her head in her hands. "That's news to me."
"I never did." He seemed to struggle with the words, his posture quiet from where she could see it through her fingers, but she had no doubt those incredibly expressive eyes were fixed on her and reflecting the difficulty he was having at saying the words. Sixteen months, and it came down to this? "I love you, Sara."
And she'd thought she was too tired for anger. She jumped up on a sudden surge of adrenaline and stabbed her finger toward him. "Stop it. Just - stop saying that. You can't keep saying that like it fixes everything." To her horror, she felt tears begin to brim in her eyes. She'd never cried before him before, not about this, and she had no intention of starting now, but the more she tried to stop them, the more fell.
It was a day for firsts. His arms were warm around her and his chest was solid under her cheek, and he held her up as her body surrendered to sobs. One hand cradled the back of her head, and the other was splayed across her back, rising and falling with the heaving of her chest. He lowered her to the couch and cradled her, and slowly the tears stopped falling, and all that was left of the sobs were some very unflattering hiccoughs.
"God, Sara, you're too thin," Grissom whispered into her hair, and she didn't have an answer for him. It definitely wasn't a good idea to be sitting here on the couch with him, like this, but she was too tired to move now that the adrenaline had passed, and a selfish part of her wanted to cherish his probably temporary display of affection.
Her disorientation when she began swinging through the air was complete. "Going to hurt yourself," she slurred, as if she were drunk, and blinked rapidly as her kitchen and bedroom doorframe appeared at an entirely new angle.
The bed was incredibly soft, and she closed her eyes involuntarily, dropping into sleep for a split second before Grissom's hand on her shoulder woke her back up. She stared at him through blurry eyes.
"You can't sleep in that," he said, gesturing to the pantsuit she'd worn for the day's panels and conferences.
"Oh," she replied, squinting at the silk and weighing the cost of the dry cleaner's bill against the desire to escape to sleep.
Grissom lifted up her pillow, and her head with it, sliding the flannel pajamas out. "May I..."
She stared at him blankly, and he sighed.
There was nothing sexual about his touch, but in her half-asleep state she was aroused anyway, as if in a dream, when he slid the dark cranberry slacks off her and replaced them with the soft flannel. "I'm going to need your help here," he told her, and she lifted her hips obligingly, wriggling the rest of the way into the pajama bottoms.
Next was the oversized t-shirt, and he opted to leave her camisole on, pulling the pajamas down over it. Sara snuggled under the covers he held lifted up for her, and lay still, watching Grissom in the semi-darkness of the room. He was still, and the slight twitching of his body told her he was debating with himself.
She would hate herself later for saying it, but she said it anyway. "Stay."
It was all he needed; he crossed to the other side of the bed and lay down on top of the covers. After a moment of stiff awkwardness, she scooted backward to press up against his chest, and he brought his arm up to lay the length of her body, his hand resting on her shoulder and his elbow on her hip bone, breath warm on the back of her neck.
"This doesn't solve anything," she whispered right before she fell asleep.
"I know," he whispered back.
~*~
"Oh, wow, she's beautiful," Nick said softly, reaching a tentative finger down to touch the baby's cheek. "You did a great job, Sara."
She smiled tiredly, but beatifically, tearing her gaze away from her daughter for a second to look at her friend. "Thanks, Nicky. Griss had something to do with it too, you know." Her husband squeezed her shoulder from where he sat perched on the other side of the hospital bed.
"And if we're lucky, she'll take after her mother in looks," Warrick snarked from behind Nick, and Catherine smacked his shoulder with her open palm.
"Is she waking up?" Greg asked excitedly, standing on tiptoes to hook his chin over Nick's shoulder and look down at the new mother and baby.
The baby girl blinked her eyes open and squinted, screwing up her mouth in confusion.
"She's got your eyes, Gil," Catherine told him, and it was true. Beautiful, crystal-clear blue eyes that already seemed to be looking out at the world with curiosity.
"Babies are all born with blue eyes," he told her pedantically, but ruined his lecture tone with a proud grin.
"No name yet, huh?" Nick asked, sneaking another touch. His index finger was almost bigger than the baby's entire fist.
"We still haven't decided," Grissom said, shaking his head.
"We'll wait a few more days and see if that helps us narrow it down," Sara added, and then yawned convulsively. "Sorry!"
"Hey, you've had a long night," Warrick said. "We're gone. Get your rest."
"And isn't it just like a Grissom to be born during night shift?" Catherine tossed off as she followed Warrick out of the room. Nick and Greg lingered a few moments more, and then they left as well.
"I'll call the nurse to come and bring her back to the nursery," Grissom said, and smiled and shook his head, touching his daughter's cheek in much the same way Nick had earlier, with infinite gentleness.
"Mhm," Sara agreed drowsily, exhausted but unwilling to spend even a minute apart from the baby. "We can't keep calling her 'her', Grissom."
"We'll figure it out," he promised her, and kissed her temple. "Go to sleep, Mom."
~*~
The slight smile on Sara's face morphed into a frown the instant she realized where she was waking up, and why. Shivering, she pulled her knees up and curled away from Grissom, who was still sound asleep on top of the covers.
Nine-thirty PM. Technically, Thomas had given her the night off - but an hour and a half from now, Rachel Sedgwick, the night shift coroner, would be starting Gregory Itzin's autopsy, and Sara had to be there.
She shifted slowly, so as not to wake Grissom. He was a light sleeper - not as light as she was, but still -
"Sara?"
Damn. "I have to go in to work." She had almost told him to go back to sleep, as she had dozens of times before. God. It was too easy a hole to fall back into, and this time she didn't think she'd be able to climb out.
"You have the night off."
"I have an autopsy to be at."
In response, he reached out to tug her back against him. She tolerated it until he relaxed, and then rocked against him, trying to create enough momentum to escape his arm. No such luck. "Grissom."
"Talk to me, Sara," he pleaded, still holding on tightly, so tightly she had to fight against the impulse to thrash and get clear of his arms.
"You missed your chance," she snapped, as the panic began to rise. "You let me leave."
"You said it was only a temporary separation," he said, truly confused. "You wouldn't have stayed anyway."
"You didn't even try to stop me, did you?" She needed to get out of the bed, now. "Let go of me. Now." He still didn't respond, and the terror she had been fighting finally took hold. He may have outmassed her, but the adrenaline of an imminent panic attack was pumping through her veins, and she broke his grip easily to careen over the side of the bed and hit the floor with a thump. She didn't care. She was in open space again, and breathing was easier.
"What was that all about?" Coupled with the confusion were hints of anger and frustration.
"Why did you never ask before?" she shot back, pushing herself away from the bed until her back hit the wall, and bringing her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around her shins. "We were married for sixteen months, Grissom, and I know more about my coworkers here than I do about you."
"We're still married," he pointed out.
"Technicalities," she snarled back. "We got married for all the wrong reasons, and they only got more wrong the longer we stayed married."
Grissom was finally silent, and she pushed on while she still had the courage to continue. "I still don't know what the hell made us think that marriage was the right solution to me getting pregnant."
"It worked," he said wistfully, and their eyes connected over the rumpled bedsheets.
Sara smiled softly. "Yeah, it did. For a little while. It was great."
Neither of them stated the obvious. It was there, and it needed to be said, but neither of them could bring themselves to go there just yet.
It worked while we had the baby to focus on.