TITLE: Revelation
AUTHOR: Anansay
SUMMARY: Grissom discovers something unsettling at a crime scene.
RATING: G
SPOILERS: None.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Second response to the latest Unbound Challenge. First and Last lines provided. No more than 1,000 words.
I realized a couple of scenarios for those lines. I couldn't resist them.

Revelation

Grissom froze suddenly; the growl was soft, but dangerous, and coming from below his waist. He felt it more than heard it but looked around himself anyway. Nobody appeared to notice, and that was good.

The magnanimous insult of his body's betrayal of his own conscious decision to forgo something like a breakfast did not sit well and he found himself scowling. He didn't know he was scowling until Sara made a face back at him.

"What?" His frustration coming through loud and clear in the curt, sharp word.

Sara made another face at him. "Don't ask me, you were the one scowling."

"I wasn't scowling." Grissom bent over to finish the gathering of a fingerprint.

Sara snorted. "Right. Like pursing your lips and scrunching up your eyebrows isn't a face—oh, right, that's you regular face."

Grissom whipped his head around so fast he felt the bones in his neck grind against each other as they struggled to keep pace with his frenzied gestures of self-preservation in the face of the all-knowing woman.

"Sara!"

"What?" Sara turned to face him. "Since when have you smiled, Grissom, I mean really smiled? All you do is walk around looking like some sort of unearthed Neanderthal who hates everything."

His jaw dropped.

Sara's jaw worked back and forth and Grissom could sweat there was more to come out and only by sheer force of will was Sara able to keep it inside.

"Sara…" he stared at her. It was the only thing he could do. Sara had never really spoken to him so harshly before. Oh sure, she'd berated him right to his face, her sweet breath brushing past him. But she'd never actually insulted him, only his work habits. And lack of life habits, with regard to work. Always within the realm of work.

But this was personal. She was telling him off, in a very personal way. Like something a… friend would do.

Grissom sat back on his haunches, the brush twirling absentmindedly in his fingers, tossing little bits of powder to come shimmering down on his shoe. He stared at Sara as she grabbed something with a pair of tweezers, her hand strong and steady.

There was a time when her hand wasn't all that steady in his presence. He'd noted it, filed it away under 'interesting responses to his existence', and tried to think nothing more of it. Of course, the more it happened—and it happened almost every time—the mental folder grew bigger and bigger until he could no longer just shove it away in some drawer and turn his back on it. It had come exploding out at him, papers flying all over the place, blinding him momentarily to say something really stupid and inane.

And now her hand was rock steady, her breathing even and shallow. She was concentrating on that little filament stuck in the carpet fibers, tugging on it with the hands of surgeon, urging it free until she held up, victorious in her battle against this piece of possibly crucial evidence.

Her eyes met his above the captive fiber.

What Grissom saw made him catch his breath. Her eyes twinkled in the dim light and her exquisite lips puckered in a triumphant grin. What had made her happy was the simple acquisition of a piece of thread. Not being with Grissom. Not having him look at her.

With a flick of her eyebrow—catch that, if you can—she rose, gathered her case and disappeared from the room. Grissom followed her with his eyes, his mind a complete jumble as to what had happened. Or, more like, what had not happened. There hadn't been any tense silences between them. There hadn't been any unnecessary touching. There hadn't been anything of what used to be.

And suddenly, as much as Grissom had wished Sara would "grow up" and relinquish him from her fantasies, he suddenly wished he were back in them.

One thought kept going around and around in his mind as he continued his own work, "How did this happen?"

THE END