Disclaimer: Neither the characters nor setting belong to me; no profit is being made from this fanfic.
She'd tried before, putting herself out there, trying to deal with it head on. Every time he'd deflected her approach. That distance around him was, she'd begun to suspect, a non-negotiable part of who he was. She'd thought it was something they'd had in common: they were both a little out-of-step emotionally, a little socially awkward. But Sara knew that she had needs and emotions, even if she wasn't always sure of how to express them.
Grissom, she'd discovered, wasn't alone because of a lack of confidence. Sara had never seen any sign of doubt in him about the rightness of who he was, and his solitude looked to be a choice, consciously made, to shelve some desires in order to better pursue the passions he'd judged most important.
She told herself that he didn't have emotions, and tried to feel scorn. She told herself that his lack of affect was, indeed, a lack, a flaw, something missing.
Alone at night she told herself the truth. She wanted him. Exactly as he was, she wanted him.
"Would you like to come to my place, order something to eat?" she asked, trying to make it sound offhand and unrehearsed.
And then when he looked at her, head cocked to one side, his gaze steady and unblinking, and finally said, "no, let's go to my place," she hated herself. He had to be doing it out of a sense of duty, she thought; he was making sure she didn't derail again, checking up on her mental health. It was a pity date. No, it was worse than that: it wasn't even a date, it was a follow-up.
And so after they'd eaten, and he'd asked her a few questions about how she was feeling, how her work was going, she'd fully expected him to politely dismiss her. Instead he'd sat for a moment, observing her. Those eyes, she thought, saw everything and gave nothing away, and she wished she could take back every unwanted signal of her interest and hide it all away.
"Would you like to come to bed with me?" he asked.
Sara stared. "I—uh—yeah," she said, silently cursing her ineptitude. The butterflies on the wall were nothing compared to the ones newly sprung to life in her stomach.
In the bedroom he undressed as calmly as if they'd done this a thousand times. Sara's hands shook so badly she could barely unbutton her jeans. Finally, after an agony of fumbling and dropping her clothes when she tried to fold them, she she was naked, sitting on the edge of his bed and feeling terribly exposed. Was it supposed to be like this, she wondered, were they supposed to just undress, silently? Shouldn't they be touching each other now?
She looked at Gil, and the last shreds of her self-confidence fled. His body wasn't hard or cut with muscles, but he looked perfectly at home in his skin, and she felt a rush of desire—but he couldn't feel the same way. She was naked and waiting for him, and he was only semi-hard.
She gestured at him and said, "you, uh, you've changed your mind?" She'd meant it as a joke, but it didn't quite work. He raised one eyebrow questioningly, then understood.
"You mean because I'm not fully erect?" he asked. "That just requires some…direct stimulation."
He came and sat next to her on the bed, their arms touching. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt dizzy. How did peopledo this?
But Gil's voice was calm, reassuring. "For a man of my age and physical condition, it's normal to need physical contact, Sara," he said, and she turned to look at him. "It isn't too late for you to change your mind," he said gently.
"I haven't changed my mind," she said, her voice deepening.
He put one arm around her shoulders, pulled her closer, and kissed her: a confident, matter-of-fact kiss, but unexpectedly tender.