A/N: Here we go again! This is another 'G/S friendly' chapter, for those who are interested in that sort of thing *grin* I hope it lives up to your expectations, at least a little. If you DO like this chapter, you have to thank my friend and beta, Grissom, once again! The end of this chapter was purely her idea, and the whole thing was written to lead up to that 'ending.' So we owe 'Grissom' another round of 'shippy' thanks for this chapter! Thanks, as always, for all the reviews! Enjoy!
Chapter 13: Sleep
The muffled cries barely made a dent in Sara's slumbering mind. But they slowly grew, demanding attention, pulling her from the grip of sleep, until, suddenly, she was wrenched from the warm confines of unconsciousness and thrust into the harsh world of awareness. She sat upright on the couch, her heart pounding. It took a few more seconds for the sounds to register and be recognized. "God, Grissom!" she said out loud, fully awake in an instant. She practically ran into his room, immediately clicking on the light.
He was thrashing around on the bed, the blankets twisted and tossed in every direction, the terrified sounds that had tugged her from sleep coming roughly from his throat.
Ignoring the slightly light-headed feeling she had gotten from getting up so fast, she reached down to carefully grab Grissom's arms, even though she knew she probably shouldn't. At first, he fought her, his hands forming into fists as he cried, "No!"
"Grissom, it's all right. It's me, Sara," she said, trying to calm him.
He continued resisting, but she was afraid to hold his arms with any more pressure. She was about to let go when he relaxed somewhat, his arms now resting at his sides. He was still muttering something, and Sara cringed at the fear in his words. "Grissom, Grissom," she repeated, her tone soothing. She slid her hands up to his shoulders and kept them there. "Grissom," she tried one more time.
Seemingly reacting to her touch, he stopped moving and got completely quiet. She loosened her grip and was going to let go, thinking he was sleeping peacefully again, when he suddenly jerked awake. He looked around blankly, trying to get his bearings. "Sara?" he called shakily, although she was right in front of him.
The trembling in his voice caused her heartbeat to quicken once again. "I'm right here," she assured him.
He looked at her and blinked, his vision clearing. Once he saw that she was there, he relaxed, exhaling deeply as he dropped his head back onto the pillow. He covered his eyes, rubbing them, then moved his hands over the rest of his face, wiping off the perspiration that had collected there.
"Are you all right?" she asked, her voice nearly as unsteady as his had been.
He looked at her with bleary blue eyes. "I'm…I don't…" He trailed off, shaking his head and averting his gaze from her concerned one.
She had kept one hand on his shoulder, and now she moved it down his arm, stroking reassuringly. "Grissom…" she began, but then she felt him moving as he pushed himself upright. She tried to assist him, making sure he didn't shift too quickly. Then he slid his legs off the side of the bed and sat there on the edge.
Sara lowered herself down beside him. He didn't glance toward her—he just kept staring straight ahead. She saw that he was shaking, and she knew it wasn't all from feverish chills. His nightmare seemed less intense than the one he had experienced in Brass's office earlier, but Sara could tell he was still pretty rattled. She wished she knew what she could do to help him.
"Grissom, I…" she began hesitantly. "Is there anything I can do?" Not surprisingly, he offered no response to her concerned query, but she pressed on anyway, hoping to get him to talk, "Was it like before? The same dream?"
She both heard and felt him let out a long, deep breath. But he remained silent.
"It's okay," she surrendered. "You don't have to tell me."
She began to rise, but he surprised her by reaching over and laying a hand on her arm, silently compelling her to stay. "It wasn't exactly like in Brass's office," he started quietly. "That dream was more…specific. It was almost linear, like there was logic to it, order. It was almost like a…story." He stopped and looked her way, an embarrassed grin on his face. "I don't know if that makes any sense."
She nodded, encouraging him to go on.
"But just now…" He paused, attempting to control the quiver in his voice. "Just now it was different. The images were more…fractured. They just rushed by without rhyme or reason." He lifted his hand from Sara's arm and used it to rub his eyes again.
Grissom hadn't slept long, and he still looked exhausted, so Sara asked, "Do you want to try to go back to sleep?"
He shook his head forcefully, as if he were trying to free himself from the heavy fatigue that clung to him, weighing him down like the sagging branches of a willow tree. "No," he said. "I think I need to get out of this room."
"Grissom, I don't think…"
"Just for a little while, Sara," he explained, looking at her again. "A change of scenery can't hurt. I need to stretch and move around a little."
Sara wasn't so sure, but she gave in. "I guess you could come out into the other room and we'll find you something to eat."
She noticed that he looked almost relieved as he slowly got to his feet. Once he was completely free of the bed coverings, his shivering began to intensify. She glanced around the room, and then toward the closet. Opening it and scanning inside, she pulled a green fleece blanket off the shelf. Unfolding it, she stepped back over to him and tossed it around his shoulders. "There," she said, smiling at him. "Come on." They walked together into the main living area and Grissom sat down on the couch, pulling the blanket more tightly around himself. For someone who had claimed he needed to "move around," Sara thought he had plunked himself down into a sitting position pretty quickly.
Sara poured him some juice, and then brought it over and set it down on the table near his left arm. She also made sure to move a box of tissues next to him. It seemed that she was just in time as he suddenly grabbed a tissue and sneezed and coughed. Sara thought his cough sounded better, and she was glad the medicine seemed to be working. "What do you think you want to eat?" she asked him.
"What do you suggest?" he replied, looking up at her.
"I don't know…scrambled eggs, toast, oatmeal?" She tried to think of bland, but substantial foods that would be gentle on his stomach. "I could whip up some macaroni and cheese. There's also some soup left over from earlier—tomato, this time."
He grimaced. The mention of soup brought back unpleasant sensations from his and Catherine's detour onto the roadside. He didn't think he'd be able to look at a bowl of soup again for quite some time. "No soup," he said, repeating his words from the break room.
"Sorry, I forgot," she told him. She still didn't understand his sudden aversion to soup, but she decided not to inquire further. "So, what do you say? What do you think would be the safest for your stomach?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure."
"Let's start with something simple then," she said. "Just toast." She moved into the kitchen area and located the loaf of wheat bread, popping two slices into the toaster. "How about some jelly?"
He looked up from the advanced crossword puzzle book he had retrieved from the coffee table. He had just begun a fresh page and he stopped in the middle of the first clue to answer Sara, "Sure. There are a few different kinds in the fridge."
A few minutes later, Sara came over with the toast and jam. He put down the book and took a tentative bite of the crispy bread. When that went down without incident, he ate the rest of what was on the plate. He was still hungry, but he wasn't willing to risk a possible bad reaction from his stomach. "Thanks, Sara," he said as she took the empty plate from him.
"Anything else?"
"Not right now," he replied, turning back to his puzzle.
She fixed herself a fresh cup of tea and then joined him on the sofa. She watched him concentrating, his brow furrowed, as he continued to work the crossword. He would jot a word occasionally, and then go back to motionless thinking. He seemed content to have something to occupy his mind for a while. Sara thought he still looked incredibly tired, though, and he would shiver strongly and adjust the blanket every so often.
She knew he should probably be in bed, but she let him be for now. Picking up the forensics magazine she had been reading earlier, she settled in next to him. As she sipped the tea and paged through the journal, she made sure to look up frequently so she could keep a close eye on him.
They had only been sitting there for a few minutes when Sara noticed that Grissom's eyelids seemed to be growing heavy. He was rubbing at his eyes a lot and had stopped writing in his crossword book altogether. Suddenly, he stood, went over and looked out the window, although he wasn't really seeing anything, and then began pacing the length of the room. He still had the blanket clutched around his shoulders.
Sara watched him for a while in puzzlement.
Then he asked, "Have you heard from Catherine?"
"Yeah," she said, realizing that she had neglected to fill him in. "She called earlier. She told me they took the bowls you had seen, and that they also found some art supplies with evidence of blood on them. They're waiting on all the results now."
They shared a look as the significance of that information passed between them.
Then she continued, "And Greg matched the latest body to blood from the walls of our crime scene. You were right about her being the third victim, Gris."
He nodded, and then resumed his restless pacing. Before long, the pounding that had started up again in his head and the weighty fatigue that surrounded him forced him back down onto the couch. He slumped forward, his head in his hands, and blew out a lungful of air.
Sara looked at him, slightly amused at the way he was trying so hard to fight the inevitable. "Why don't you just go back to bed, Grissom?"
At that, he sat straight up. "No," he said, too suddenly. "I mean, I'm not really tired, I need to…think about things, about the case."
"It looks to me like you can hardly keep your eyes open," she replied, her tone light.
"I'm very awake, Sara. I'm fine right here," he asserted, scooping the crossword book and pen off the table and getting back to work.
He scowled at the page of clues and Sara knew the anger in his look was really directed at her. Chuckling to herself, she turned back to the magazine article she had been skimming through.
Grissom's act of being "fine" didn't last very long. His head would nod forward as exhaustion overtook him, but each time he would shake himself awake. He tried getting up again, moving around, drinking the juice, anything to keep himself from the clutches of sleep. Eventually, though, even he had to admit defeat.
"Are you ready to go to bed now?" she asked, trying to conceal the grin on her face. But the look of reluctance and the flicker of fear that crossed his features changed her whole attitude. She had been amused by his behavior, thinking that he was just being stubborn and showing his aversion to being 'mothered.' But now she realized the truth. He's afraid, she thought, feeling horrible that she hadn't noticed earlier. What kind of investigator am I if I missed that? she wondered, annoyed that her skills of observation had failed her. How could she not have been aware that Grissom was avoiding sleep because he dreaded the possibility that the visions of his nightmare might come back? She, of all people, understood that. She knew what it was like to be haunted by a case, to hear the screams of the victims reverberating through your sleeping mind, to wake up in a cold sweat with their cries still echoing in your ears. She couldn't believe she had been so insensitive to what was bothering him.
You wanna sleep with me?
Her own words from two years ago came back to Sara now. Grissom's reaction had been priceless—complete shock, followed by a perplexed pause while he wiped his hand over his mouth. Then he had pulled his glasses off and asked, "Did you just say what I think you said?" His voice had been quiet, uncertain, but with a hint of interest—or maybe that had only been her imagination. Sara remembered that case and that conversation well:
That way when I wake up in a cold sweat under the blanket hearing Kaye's screams, you can tell me it's nothing—it's just empathy.
The Kaye Shelton case had made quite an impact on Sara. It had caused her the worst nightmares she could remember. It had originally looked as though Kaye's guilty-as-sin, battering husband would get away with her murder, until Grissom had spent a frigid night out behind the CSI garage, using a pig to adjust the findings of his initial insect regression.
He had done all that because Sara had come to him wanting more—needing more—from the evidence so they would be able to convict Scott Shelton. When Sara had found out what he was doing—for Kaye and for her—she had come out to join him, bringing peace offerings of hot coffee and warm blankets. The word 'sweet' was not often used by people when describing Grissom, but Sara knew better, knew him better. She had thought that what he did on that long, cold night was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for her. She still did, even though his pig experiment didn't end up being what they ultimately needed to get Scott Shelton. But by trying to help their victim back then, Grissom had also helped banish Sara's nightmares. And now she hoped to be able to do the same for him.
"Come on, Grissom," she said, her voice soft and full of sympathy. She took his arm as they returned to the bedroom. "It'll be all right. I'm sure you'll be asleep so quickly that you won't even have a chance to dream."
He turned and looked at her, surprised that she saw through him so easily. He paused by the bed, still unsure, but then Sara took the blanket from around his shoulders and he slowly laid down on the mattress, pulling the comforter up over him.
Sara thought she should probably stay in the room with him, but she didn't want to push it if he didn't ask, so she turned to leave.
"Sara?" he called after her.
"What?" she replied innocently.
"Would you…would it be all right if you…?" He stopped and shook his head as he changed his mind. "Nothing," he finished.
She studied him for a moment. She knew exactly what he would need to rest peacefully, but she didn't want to suggest it if it would make him uncomfortable. That was the last thing she wanted to do right now. But he looked so miserable—sick and worried and exhausted beyond belief—that she felt she had to offer. "You want me to sleep with you?" she asked, a variation on her infamous question from two years ago. She couldn't help the hint of a grin from appearing on her face.
"Did you say what I think you said?" Grissom's response and words were nearly identical to what he had said back then, proving that he, too, recalled that conversation.
"Yeah," she began, then clarified, "I mean I'll actually sleep, Grissom. I can lie on the other side of the bed—above the covers, fully clothed—and get some sleep. I can use it, too, and I think it might help you just…having someone there. It might help keep the dreams away."
"I'm not…I don't know, Sara," he stammered. But truthfully he felt a great sense of relief at her suggestion. He wanted to just say yes, but he was certain it would be awkward for her. And he was embarrassed, too. This is ridiculous! he thought. A grown man afraid to go to sleep… But he was so unbelievably exhausted—too exhausted to even think. And he knew Sara's presence would help him sleep undisturbed—having her around had always comforted him in some way. Even though he also knew sharing a bed with Sara was highly inappropriate, he still wanted to take her up on her offer. I must be delirious, he thought in exasperation as he responded affirmatively, "Yes. Thanks, Sara, I appreciate it. As long as you're sure you're okay with it."
"It's fine, Grissom," she said, slipping her shoes off. "I just want to help." She climbed onto the other side of the mattress and settled into Grissom's king-size bed. It was nice—roomy, inviting, the mattress providing just the right combination of softness and support. She noticed him also shifting around, trying to get comfortable. He rolled onto his back, pulling the covers up to his chest, and resting his arms at his sides.
"You got the light?" she asked.
"Yeah," he replied, reaching up to twist off the lamp.
Darkness and silence swallowed the room as Grissom closed his eyes, because he simply had to, both hoping for and resisting sleep. Next to him, Sara lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. She glanced at him every so often to see how he was doing.
After a few minutes, Sara heard him take a sharp gasp of air, and she felt the bed move as he jerked himself awake. "It's all right, Grissom," she said, touching his arm. "You're all right."
He looked over at her in the dimness as his heartbeat slowed back to normal, until his heavy eyelids closed again, dragging him back into slumber.
Twice more in the next half-hour, Grissom shook himself awake just as he crossed the threshold into deep sleep. Both times Sara tried to reassure him and get him to calm down again. Knowing how incredibly tired he was, she couldn't believe that he was still fighting his body's need for rest. She reached over and grasped his hand, prepared for him to pull away, but thinking that sustained physical contact might help.
For a second, Grissom's hand went lax in her grip, but then he repositioned his fingers, entwining them with hers, and held on tightly.
Smiling at the touch of his warm palm against hers, Sara literally felt him relax as he released a long breath. "Good night, Grissom," she said.
"Actually, I've lost track of whether it's nighttime or daytime." The blinds and curtains were shut tight, preventing them from being able to tell if darkness had fallen yet.
"It doesn't matter," she replied, still smiling. "Just go to sleep."
He closed his eyes and sank into the welcoming blackness.
Soon the only sounds in the room were the whirring of the air conditioning unit and the soft whisper of their combined breathing. She listened as his evened out and became more rhythmic. Once she was certain he was finally sleeping, she closed her own eyes and quickly joined him in slumber.
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