Title: More Than This
Author: ScullyAsTrinity
Category: Major angst.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't even have the energy to... GRR YANKEES SUCK!
Notes: Major inspiration comes from 'The Old Apartment' by Barenaked Ladies (my boys!) and various Howie Day songs. You can find most of the lyrics on his site. I take no credit for CSI or Howie Day, however, I do reserve the right to Barenaked Ladies if only because I'm in oh so deep with them.
Summary: A series of moments in the timeline of Grissom and Sarah, from beginning to end.
"I think you're wrong."
Doctor Gil Grissom stopped mid pace and put down the death head moth he was holding. The brunette in the front row hadn't even bothered to raise her hand.
"Oh, really?"
There was something about him, something that made her ponder. That took her mind off of real work and placed it in the realm of fantasy.
He was so incredibly passionate about his work, his bugs, his students. He lacked passion for himself. She could see it in his eyes, something that made them stutter when he saw two of her classmates kissing just before the lecture began. Something that stuck in him. His nose scrunched just a bit and his brow furrowed, as if he was wondering why, why such a physicality would be considered so precious.
But he had launched into his lecture without pre-empt and left her sitting in mystery.
Out of the shower that particular night, hair damp, robe tied tight, she moved into the living room of her apartment and sat herself on the couch. Sara pulled her legs underneath her and looked over to her roommate who was staring blankly at the television. "Good episode. Mulder gets some in this one." The roommate commented blankly.
"Janel, this is becoming an obsession." Sara had replied, toying with a strand of damp hair. Janel nodded absent mindedly and waited until commercial to speak to her.
"So, ice cream?" Janel launched herself off the sofa but kept speaking. "Hey, Doctor Grissom's weird eh? Thought I saw him talking to himself today." She flashed a grin over her shoulder as she rummaged through the freezer. "Can't fault him really. Man's incredibly handsome in that 'I've got a dark past' sort of way." Her grin became wider as she returned to the sofa with a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and two spoons.
Sara dug in but kept quiet. After a moment she replied.
"I guess."
The words were overripe, almost rotting. The time for the saying of them had passed. And even as he said them now he realized that he wasn't sure if there ever was a time that they would have been wholly appropriate.
They were a sugary-sweet confection on his lips, making him lick them in an attempt to rid them of the pretend substance. Her response wasn't expected, though he hadn't exactly expected her to launch herself into his arms.
"No." Her eyes had lifted for the briefest of moments to arch at him and returned to the work before her.
"No. No?" He inquired, his hands shaking just slightly in anticipation.
"I can't accept that Grissom. The time has passed." The glance that she made at him this time was stony, full of rage and wasted moments. "And if that's all you came to say, I've gotta get back to this." Her nostrils flared and she waved the sheets of paper around a bit for effect. She didn't move to mark them as she set them back on the desk and stared at them.
He wondered if years ago, it really would have been different.
Sara hoped that he would take her stillness as a prompt for him to leave, but he simply stood there, his body silhouetted by the harsh fluorescence of the hall lights. "No." He repeated baffled and made his way slowly back down the halls of the lab, bitterness like stale coffee on his tongue.
He had been her lecturer at Harvard. Late nights, a few trips to his office to discuss this topic or that had ended up with them lounging in the chairs at Au Bon Pain, sipping coffee and listening to the street buskers croon for a living.
He vaguely remembered her telling him something about one of them at the time, that he'd go somewhere. And she had spoken his words out loud, just after he sang them. "So you think, you can hold the world up by a string." And she'd smiled and sipped at her bitter coffee. He knew it was bitter, she always without sugar. She never cringed, just swallowed.
Just when Grissom was ready say to something relevant, she interrupted. "So about the insect casings in the nasal cavity... how did you establish a timeline."
He had stared at her for a moment and let the question settle. The people behind him were discussing calculus and laughing. To their left were people playing chess. To their right was Cambridge Savings and two dozen more people wrapped up in the real world.
And there he was, staring at his student, wondering if he could decipher her mind. It was a hobby of his, figuring others out. But he couldn't dig into her, as she sat there, allowing the fall breeze to sift through her hair, not caring if it was out of place. A hand to her forehead shifted the hair out of her eyes so she could eye her notes, so she could watch the people around her.
The breeze had stirred something within him, a fire that he knew shouldn't exist. His coffee scorched his tongue when he swallowed it, but made no such expression. Boston smelled of maple and sugar and the freshness of a New England autumn.
Her hands had stretched across the table and taken his in them. Eyes, his eyes snapped to meet hers. They were both so many miles from where they should truly be but... that autumn night had stirred something in the both of them. "I think about you too much. I think..." She no longer had anything to distract her as the coffee she was sipping was gone.
The street busker launched into another tune that was equally as sad. She seemed not to notice as she worried the edges of her notes. A resolve went up about her and she smiled self-deprecatingly to herself and sighed long and low.
"I'm wondering why you had to tell me what's going in your head, what's wrong." He had whispered under his breath turning away, disregarding the same notes in front of him. "This guy's pretty good." He commented, not really wanting to meet her eye but doing so anyway.
"And when she says she wants somebody, she doesn't mean you..."
A few months later, with the vision of her burned into his memory, he called her up. Three in morning, over on the East Coast. She had picked up, her voice heavy from sleep, and his heart hitched in his chest for the briefest of moments.
"-He-hello?" He could imagine her wiping the sleep from her eyes and attempting to discern the name on the caller ID.
"Sara." He had said it with more longing than he had meant to and regretted it immediately. He hoped that since she had just woken up, that she perhaps wouldn't notice.
"Gris... Grissom?" She asked. He heard the rustling of sheet.
"...Yes." Then he wasn't sure what to say. His fingers hadn't consulted his better reasoning on the phone call, and his brain was thick with wanting and he couldn't think of anything to say. "I, uh, I don't have a reason..." Finger pinched the bridge of his nose and he wondered just how rude it would be to place the receiver back in its cradle.
She sighed a long, slow sigh like she had that night and snuggled under the covers inside her Beacon Hill apartment. It was her decision to take the conversation any further.
"The East Coast suits me." She said to him, words silly and sleep-laden and terribly sexy. He wished he could see her, hair mussed, face filled with winter moonlight. "It's cold here. I love it."
"No need for a tan."
"Never had a need for one in the first place." She retorted immediately, and he smiled, stunned by her ability to quip after being woken up. For a moment, Grissom thought that it was perhaps her age, her ability to perk up in an instant. But if it was, what were all of the other girls, all of her peers... what were they missing?
He wanted her there for some reason, he couldn't pinpoint why, but his stomach felt vaguely empty when he thought of how far away she was. "I've got a consult. No one here can read this. I was gonna offer you a chance on it." The words were out of his mouth before he knew it.
And he realized how simple it really was.
"Minneapolis?" She asked, doubting that the city really held anything for her but him. The sheets has suddenly felt damp against her skin and she had felt hot, just wondering what it would be like working alongside him, trying to prove herself.
"Yeah."
"I really don't have the funds to-"
"I have that covered."
"Gil-" She stuttered over his first name, having only said it a handful of times.
"I have that covered." He repeated, his hand coming up to run through his hair... shaky. His whole body was tense waiting for her answer. It had never been like him to be tense, but he was and he had tried to stave off the inevitable rush of sweat that would appear.
"Okay."
A gentleman, he had meant to be a gentleman. He picked her up at the airport, took her bag, drove her back to his apartment and put her up for the duration of her stay. He was trying to be a gentleman, that was all. He saw the look on his landlord's face as he placed a hand on the small of her back and led her through the foyer door.
A raised eyebrow and a smirk. Mr. Denson thought that Sara was his lover.
Five nights and four days of her sleeping in his apartment. Five nights of him fighting the urge to creep to her room and listen to her breathe. Four days of him holding back from seeing how warm her skin felt under the ripe sun. So many hours spent with her longing... having his desire returned only with a mug of coffee in the morning and a place on his couch in the evening.
They shared the eleven o'clock news and idle chats by his fireside. They shared glances that stayed too long and an awkward moment when she had fallen into his arms by his kitchen counter.
She finished off a cup of yogurt that he had left open in the refrigerator and he had placed a bottle of water on her beside table for when she awoke at night.
They chose not to acknowledge the fact that he bought her new shampoo when she ran out on the third day. They chose to ignore the fact that the furniture in the guestroom was too new, and fit her too well.
They chose to ignore the way his hand brushed against her hair the first day, and the exact passion that the heat of his breath felt on his cheek when she leaned down to take his apartment key from his hand and open the door.
The last call she had received from him was unexpected. Padding barefoot through her apartment, she heard the trill of her new cordless over the bass of Jim Creeggan. She reached the phone just as the voice of Steven Page was wailing about his old apartment.
She turned the volume down and listened to the disembodied voice. "...Sara..."
And that was all she had needed to pick up. She dropped the spatula that she was clutching and it clattered to the surface of the worn coffee table. She plopped down on the couch and pushed the 'talk' button.
Five years later, she sat at a conference table listening to him speak. He was handing out assignments. His eyes passed over his hands as they clutched the papers in front of him. He watched as he passed one casually to Nick. She watched as he pulled back and looked at her.
She mind flashed to the scene that had transpired between the two of them earlier.
"I... I don't want it to be too late. Sara I, I... you... you are... whenever I... I think about... you're just... all I think about and I..." Sigh. "I...lo-... I think I... I don't want it to be too late... for... for... us."
"No."
She snapped back to the present.
She saw the look in his eyes, as he remembered what he had said to her that day. How his emotions had spilled over the brim. She remembered how angry she was, and how she had told him that she didn't accept what he was saying.
But she did. She tried to pour her words into colors which were expressed through her eyes, but he just looked at her. Flippant. Coy. Cool.
"DB at the Basin." He tossed the paper her way without much thought and went on talking.
She wanted it to move forward.
She wanted it over.
She wanted something... more than this.