"Hey, Sara." Carl slung an arm around her before coming up on her left side to look down at her. "Feeling better?"
She considered confronting him and asking him just how he knew she'd been upset, but she had a strong suspicion that the source of his information was across the room, nibbling on a pastry and chatting to Philip Rosten about his presentation. In retrospect, it probably hadn't been a good idea to schedule a seminar on decomposition stages right before the lunch break - there were quite a few young CSIs wandering around in varying shades of green.
"Much, thank you." She offered him up a genuine smile and tossed the coffee stir stick in the basket provided. "Sorry I wasn't here this morning."
"Megan made it very clear that she didn't even expect you here this afternoon." Carl paused in his action of putting the creamer back on the table. "Why are you here this afternoon?"
"This is my responsibility," she said simply.
"Uhm," Carl said, tapping his fingers against the side of his mug. "And you and Gil..."
She just arched an eyebrow.
"Right. None of my business. I know." He turned as if to leave, and then stopped. "But I saw that smile on your face, Sara. I'm glad you two worked something out."
"Yeah," she said to herself more than to his retreating back, "so am I."
She was still lost in the afterglow of her first real conversation with Grissom in so many months. Their problems weren't behind them now - the moments of awkwardness and grief had still outnumbered the easy camraderie - but just the end of the silence made a world of difference in at least Sara's ability to deal with it.
Most couples, she reflected, didn't start out with marriage and work from there to establish the foundation of a relationship.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Ken asked, coming up behind her with a smile. "On second thought, from the look on your face, I'd have to offer you at least a silver dollar. You still with us?"
"Right here," Sara reassured him. "What did you think of Dr. Rosten's seminar?"
The chemistry professor snorted and shook his head. "I think I'm very glad I'm in the academic world. I've never smelled anything that disgusting in my life." He frowned, a thought occuring to him. "I didn't see you there, though."
"I just got here," she replied with a shrug, and didn't elaborate further even when faced with the question in his eyes. "I've attended similar seminars at other conferences, though, so I've got a pretty good idea. And...well, I've seen and smelled enough of it on crime scenes."
"Right." Another snort of disbelief. "I'll leave that stuff to you." Something beyond her field of vision caught his eye, and he excused himself, leaving her standing alone beside the coffee table with a rapidly-cooling mug of sludge.
Not alone for long, though - she would know that gentle pressure on her elbow anywhere. Grissom circled around to face her with a shy smile. "Hey."
"Hey," she replied, and they stood quietly for a few moments before Sara continued. "You know, everyone in the room just started speculating about what it means that we're talking."
"Let them," he said in the matter-of-fact voice that was so like him. "Will you have dinner with me tonight?"
Her eyes widened and she almost moved backward a step before she caught herself. "Um, Griss, I don't know if..." She caught herself at the look of fear in his eyes. "I'm working."
"Seven?" he suggested, raising an eyebrow.
Sara considered, weighed, and measured all the possible reasons why rushing a relationship with Grissom would be adverse to her mental health right now.
"Seven works."
~*~
"I'm - sorry." Sara opened the door to let Grissom in and immediately rushed back to the kitchen, where she downed the last bit of coffee in a mug she set in the sink. "Marianne called. Her son's got some twenty-four hour bug that's going around, and she asked if I could take her place as Boston CSI's liaison on the outing tonight. I tried to page you..."
"I left it in Vegas."
Sara skidded to a stop on her way back into her bedroom. "You what?"
"I left my pager in my desk drawer. Catherine's probably trying to figure out where the noise came from right now."
She swallowed convulsively. "Wow, Grissom, that's...why would you do that?"
He shrugged easily, and the movement did a lot to remind her of just how good he looked in his casual charcoal jacket and dark blue button-down shirt. "I didn't want to be disturbed."
"Oh." She blinked once, twice, and continued on her previous trajectory into the bedroom, thoughts churning. Grissom had left his pager at home. He hadn't wanted to be disturbed. That was...unprecedented. Her investigator's mind began to turn over all the possible meanings to "I didn't want to be disturbed," and she ended by tossing them all out the window. Normal rules didn't tend to apply when trying to understand anything that came out of Grissom's mouth.
She returned from the bedroom, having straightened the covers and grabbed an extra change of clothes - she would have to go straight to work.
"We still need to talk," she informed him, stuffing dark pants and a navy blue sweater into the small travel bag she'd bought for that express purpose.
He didn't say anything. It looked like they were back to uncommunicative Grissom.
Okay, fine, she could deal with that. "I mean, yeah, we talked about...things, but there's still a lot of...stuff that we need to get out, and this probably works out for the best, because I don't think a dinner atmosphere would really have been the best place to talk about all the ways a relationship can go sour."
Oh, God, was she babbling? She was babbling. There was a reason this went much easier when he participated in the discussion.
"Hello? Grissom?"
"I'm listening," he pointed out mildly from where he'd perched himself on a corner of her couch, able to watch her move about the apartment as she gathered her things for work and for the seminar on snowed-in crime scenes that Marianne had been scheduled to supervise.
Sara blew a frustrated breath out through her lips, pushing the hair out of her face from where it had fallen as she knelt over, trying to find her heavy waterproofed boots in the back of the coat closet that doubled as a utility closet in the back of the kitchen. "It's just, what I'm saying is - ow!" She sucked on her tongue ruefully; she'd hit her head on the bottom shelf trying to pull back with the boots and had bitten part of her tongue, hard.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she grumbled, pushing herself off from the floor and carrying the boots over to set them by the door. A subject change was in order; clearly they weren't quite up to discussing any of the myriad issues that surrounded them just yet. "How much do you know about crime scenes in the snow?"
"Not as much as I'd like," he admitted. "We don't get many of them in Las Vegas."
"Ha ha," she snarked back, packing her lighter, everyday wear boots in the travel bag to go with her clothes for work later that night. "That's the seminar I have to babysit tonight." Suddenly shy, she stood up straight and looked at him, looking more natural than he had any right to be while sitting on the arm of her couch. "I can't make dinner, but I can offer you fun with Snow Print Wax."
"As long as I can take a raincheck," Grissom reassured her with a slight smile.
"Deal."