A/N: Hey guys! So I recovered Stalemate, thanks in whole to Mark, GeekLoveFan's husband and his strange bout of déjà vu. Hey, whatever gets the job done, right? Oh, I wanted to let readers know (whether you're a livejournal user or not doesn't matter), Holly, Renee and I are working on a page where CSI fans from (and everywhere else) can post their stories and receive immediate reviews and have the ability to respond back to the reviews they get. That's why livejournal is awesome. Everyone and anyone can sign up, and you don't have to be a member of livejournal to read and respond. You DO have to be a member to post stories though. It's insanely simple for those of you who don't use it, and you should check it out. Sign up, it's gonna be good times. Just email me at
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"This is your fault." She murmured pathetically. She'd never thought of herself as the type of person to be self-destructive because of the actions of another, but she was. She wondered if it made her any less of a person and then she realized that she didn't care because it was her choice, not his.
"My fault?" Grissom was non-plussed, looking around her bathroom as if it would give him an answer that she could not.
"Yeah. This, me being drunk. Your fault. And I'm not a drunk, I'm really not. I got drunk… three times. I don't drink all the time. I don't. Believe me, I know what an alcoholic is Griss, my parents were, and I'm not. Three times in a year. That's it."
He stared at her, her face startlingly pale as it hovered above the white porcelain.
The alcohol coursing through her brain no longer made her feel ashamed, but brave in a way she hadn't felt before.
"Every one of those times it's been you. Can't say it's your fault because you don't know-" She cut herself off, thinking she was going to vomit again. But she didn't, she held it back, finding that the entire situation was mind over matter.
Grissom too held back, holding onto her hair as he did so.
"I guess I understand why you don't want anything to happen. Your work is your life, God knows I understand that, I do."
"You think that's what's stopping me?" He said, loudly, indignantly.
She stared at him, her mouth tasting of rum and stomach acid. Pushing herself off of the tiled floor and severed eye contact with him. Her bottom lip was caught between her lips as she reached for her toothbrush and attempted not to cry.
"Sara if I let go, if I let you in… Sara, you don't understand."
"I suppose that's okay. You don't want me to understand." She scrubbed at her molars harshly, unleashing a fraction of the pain she felt on her teeth.
Grissom scrubbed a hand through his hair harshly, wanting to pull it from the root to relieve him of the pain he felt uttering the words he was sure he would. "Do you think for one second, for one second that if you touched me, really touched me, that I'd be able to stop myself?"
He sounded so very angry, incensed at her inability to understand what he was trying to say. The looked at him then, mouth full of toothpaste and unspoken obscenities. And she blinked, blinked twice, his eyes never straying from hers.
His gaze softened at the white foam running from her. "Spit, would you." He begged softly, a ghost of a smile attempting to steal his lips. She did as he asked, rinsing her brush and he mouth with cool tap water.
"Oh just stop, stop acting so… deep, like you're in so deep." She huffed out, replacing the cheap plastic brush back in the metal holder, staring at herself in the mirror. She noticed the faint bags forming under her eyes but she didn't care, who was she trying to impress. She was far beyond caring how he saw her.
She met his eyes in the mirror, her face a blank shield.
"Can you think, for one second, that I care what you look like? Though you're gorgeous, stunning and so simple, do you really think I care what you look like, what you wear, how you act. Can you really think that I care if you cry, or of you fall apart sometimes. Do you think that any of those things can have an effect on how I feel for you?" His voice wavered, but he held onto the soft wood of the door-jamb in order to ground himself.
He moved a step forward, his eyes on fire, and for a fraction of a second she was scared of what he would do. Her back was pressed against the sink. Her headache and nausea gone only to be replaced by longing and anticipation.
She could have cared less how pale she looked at that moment. How frail she seemed standing there against her sink.
"Do you think I'd find you any sexier if you were in silk instead of cotton? Do you?" he questioned, taking another long stride into the bathroom, biting his lip. "Do you think it's be better if I said this to you over wine and candlelight Sara? Do you think I'd attempt to be any less poetic if I had you pinned against a wall? I'd like to know, because you do seem to have me figured out."
Sara sucked in a breath, wanting to respond, but not knowing how to. Instead of speaking, she pushed herself away from the porcelain and moved around him, out of the bathroom. He made no move to stop her.
Instead, he chose to follow, as she moved into her bedroom. Grissom hovered in the doorway, not wishing to overstep his bounds more than he already had.
Sara looked at him, hair in her face, sweatpants low on her hips. The picture of relaxation. A sliver of skin peeked out from the edge of the worn cotton and he longed to run his tongue along it, longing to elicit a moan from deep within her throat. Instead, he hung back, his frame fitting to the left side of the doorframe as she pulled back the covers.
"Am I confusing you?" Grissom asked her, his dark side getting the better of him, goading her on. "Do I need to clarify?"
Sara spun to face him, amazing in her fury. "You had plenty of time to do that. Years in fact. I can't put my life on standstill anymore. Yes, I loved you Grissom. I can say that to your face now. It's past tense." She fluffed her pillows with harsh hands, molding them to semi-perfection, then slamming them down on her mattress.
Grissom stared, not truly believing that she had told him that her emotions were past tense. "I should leave." He commented, almost sadly, but the words came out of his mouth sounding nonchalant, not how he'd intended.
"Yeah, you should." Sara said, not truly bothering to turn towards him, tossing the last remaining pillow into place and making a swift move to crawl into bed. He could let himself out.
However, as soon as she had sat on her bed, he was across the room his lips clinging to hers desperately, and she made no move to dislodge them.
"Please." He whispered desperately, no longer caring if he was begging. "Please, please tell me it isn't too late to have you." He panted harshly against her open lips.
Sara's hands came up to claw at his back, bunching the fabric of his shirt between her hands. "You're such a bastard. Hurt me so bad… make it up to me." She panted back into his open mouth, her tongue plunging in, staving off any response that he could have formed.
His hands tangled in her hair, as he realized how inappropriate he was acting. "Rest of my life. Promise." He replied. Warm lips plundered hers, truly explored, slowly and deliberately, and her pride crumbled and she groaned low, pulling Grissom fully onto the bed with her.
"Not like this." He panted out, grabbing her wrists as they sought to tangle around his neck once more. At his words, her lips paused and she looked at him, her eyes holding both anger and confusion.
"Sara, it can't happen like this." He kissed her nose and stilled, she lay there still, completely confused. His hands, reverent to touch, stroked over her cheekbones as both of their eyes fluttered closed.
A tear slid out of the corner of her eyes, and wouldn't have been felt unless his hand had been there. It caught at the edge of his palm and slid to his wrist, where it dried up, holding.
"No, no. I can't have it happen like this. You have to understand. This is the one time in my life… I have to have it happen… I have to make love to you Sara, I can't have it happen like this." He held her face in her hand. She smiled slightly.
"I've never done that before." She whispered back at him, her chin tipping up in an honest gesture. A pink tongue came out to wet her lips which had suddenly become parched.
"Done what?" He was confused, the tears continuing to slip from her eyes regardless of how hard she tried to hold them back.
Sara glanced at him quickly, and looked down at her hands which were held in his. "Actually, you know. I've never made love."
Grissom's eyes portrayed his shock at her statement.
Sara's posture shifted, and she attempted to change the subject. "Hey, and what was in that box you brought?" She moved to get out of bed and retrieve the box, but he stilled her with a hand across the stomach.
"It can wait til morning." Her head dropped to the pillow and Grissom dropped a kiss into her hair before she drifted off.