Thank you to Matthew for the help.
When he came home that afternoon, her things were gone. The toothbrush was missing from the cupboard and her extra clothes were absent from his bottom drawer. The leftovers from dinner had been dumped in the trash, but the table had been cleared. There was no note. He hadn't expected there to be.
He didn't know what he'd expected. Nothing really, she'd essentially given him everything and he'd simply taken it away without so much as explanation. 'I had to stop loving her-' one side of his mind screamed, while the other kept shouting, 'You stupid, incessant fool! Fool, fool, fool!' But because he loved her didn't mean he was any less confused. He was, so very. Giving himself so willingly to another human being and to have that being cultivate and reciprocate was incredibly frightening.
He loved her, deeply enough to hate her for the way he felt now. But he didn't hate her, really. or even himself. He hated the collective disaster that was bound to repeat between them. He needed to let himself believe that loop could end, the cycle could be broken, and only by an act of will.
But acts of will are hard, and frightening, and fraught with hurt and danger. So he drove. And drove, and drove, until when he was finished driving, his hands gripped the wheel as if to snap it.
It was a starry night, cool and clipped. Grissom stepped out of her car and moved over to the guardrail, regarding it as if it were a piece of evidence. Then he sat down on it, hands clasped between his knees. Head down. There was a lot to think about, there really was, and he couldn't seem to unjumble his thoughts long enough to sort them.
He laughed more, he realized. Smiled more, felt more, enjoyed... oh damn it all, enjoyed life more since he was with her. 'A common reaction to coitus,' he reasoned and nearly threw himself down the ravine for having thought such a thing. 'Asinine.'
He swiped his brow, simply because he knew he couldn't clear his thoughts. He had to try something. She wasn't the problem. He was; well, not him, just, alright him. Gil wasn't sure how to go about fixing his insecurities. They were far too frequent, invaded his brain far too often. She didn't deserve this. But he didn't know what to do. He didn't.
He wasn't sure how long he had sat there against the cold metal, but he heard a car door slam and didn't even have to turn around.
"You're a hard man to find." There was no mirth in her voice, no longing. She walked up beside him and waited for him to make some move, to turn toward her; anything. When he didn't move, she climbed over the barrier and sat down in the dirt before it, tucking her knees under her chin, looking over the valley with no real interest. "A hard man to find..." she trailed off. She'd been driving too, simply because she couldn't find him and say what she wanted, what she needed to say.
Grissom wanted to kiss her, wanted to hold her, wanted to sort out all the jumbled thoughts in his head there before so that she would understand. Perhaps she already did.
It was several moments before she spoke again.
"You know Grissom, I wanted to be there. I wanted to sit down and wait for you to come home so you could tell me why." She stared at him for a moment. "Yeah, I get that you're neurotic and completely jittery when it comes to relationships, I know." Sara wet her lips and stood up. "But that gives you no reason to treat me the way you did. The way you have."
Grissom continued to stare out at the expanse of valley laid bare before him but could not fathom words to say, nothing aside from, "I'm sorry."
Sara pondered him for a moment, but pursed her lips in sadness. "I know you are," She said, her tone final. She did, it was an absolute. Honesty shone through his eyes, and yes, she knew he was true but... "But that's just not going to work this time."
He looked down upon her and she was pale and worn. Tears stained her face, but it didn't matter because they stained his as well. Hair blowing in the wind, she looked just as lost as he was. So they sat there, still and silent for many minutes, both wanting to touch the other but knowing it was inappropriate at the time.
"I really am sorry, for... whatever." Grissom waved his hands for emphasis and continued on in a lower voice, "I want to make this better, I want to be able to give you what you need, Sara, I-"
"No, no Grissom. I don't want to friggin fall into your arms again." She didn't even bother raising her voice. "You have to straighten out your head." She paused. "God, I love you, I do, more than anything, but I can't sit on the backburner until you figure out what's wrong with your life."
He nodded, knowing that he had to straighten his head out before he could do anything.
Their eyes met at that point.
"I don't deserve that, and I can't live like that." Sara bit her lip and looked out again, proving to him beyond a doubt that she was serious. "I may love you but I can't live like that, you understand?"
Tears in his eyes that he did not wish to surrender slid back into his throat and they both sat at peace, looking out over infinity.
Grissom swallowed and turned to her with new purpose. "But you do know that I don't..." Such base words, words that could not describe... "That I don't think it would be any better for me to live without you. To stop loving you..."
A flicker of a smile passed over her features. "I know just how much you love me, but if you can't let yourself, that's an entirely different matter all together." It was said with an air of amusement that she did not feel. "You know, my grandmother used to tell me 'It doesn't matter how much you love with someone, it doesn't matter how much you're meant to be together, sometimes it just doesn't work out.'" Sara nodded and thought over the statement. "Maybe she's right, who knows."
Was he really ready to live the rest of his life alone? This was it, this was his everything, all or nothing. Was he truly ready to give up forever just because he was a bit nervous and lost? Then again, not really lost, because he was found in her eyes somehow, in some cliche manner.
Wind howled by their ears and Sara wrapped her arms tighter around herself. "You ever think you're so perfect for a person and yet you're still missing something?" It was a question that he wasn't sure he was meant to answer. He answered anyway.
"Yes."
Sara turned towards him, not sad but contemplative in a way that made him feel completely empty. "We're always together now Grissom, and I miss you more now than before. How do you do that?"
He responded immediately, ""I've been lonely so long it seems right to me. " He thought for just a moment and added, "I don't want you to miss me. I want... I want to be found."
"I don't know if I trust you."
"I know."
"But I have to want to trust you, ya know?"
Grissom sighed and placed himself down on the dirt, a few feet from her. "So you understand the attraction for me. 'I'm sorry' doesn't begin to... What do I do?"
Sara chuckled, "If I knew, I might just tell you." She tucked her hair behind her ear and sucked her smile back in.
"I don't think I want to ever consider living without you again."
"Have you?" He could still surprise her, and it showed in her voice. "Considered it?"
He hesitated, but spoke the truth. "Yes, I have."
"And?"
Grissom smiled but only a bit. She couldn't detect it in the dim light. "I... it seems to me... to be something akin to death... to live without what little love you've given me."
"Little?"
Grissom again, did not bother to look at her. "Sara Sidle, you are so filled with love I don't think I could ever deplete the supply. The fact that you're even here, willing to talk to me tonight..." She nodded and stood up. He stood as well.
"I promise Sara, I'll try anything, Sara, I-"
She clipped his words with ones of her own. "I don't want to go home alone tonight. I don't want to go home alone ever again Grissom... I don't know if you can handle that."
It was a long minute as he contemplated her words. Could he handle that? If he couldn't, he too would be alone forever, without the one person who'd actually taken the time and care to look into his heart and find love. "I can handle that."
She nodded and stepped back, hands crossed over her chest, a tiny, itsy smile toying with her lips. "Good, well... if you're not at my apartment in an hour-"
"We," he interrupted. "We'll be back at your apartment, and in a lot less than an hour."
He turned and looked at the two cars pulled off the side of the road, and then he looked at his keys in his hand.
"Why do we have two cars? We have to be alone another hour?" He looked at her in almost childlike petulance, his full lower lip a delicate arc.
"Get in," she laughed softly, not sure if he was teasing or genuinely that flustered. "We'll have impound tow yours in later."
He grinned at her, his lopsided grin, eyes bright. "We could do that, couldn't we?"
"I'll drive," she said, opening her door.
"You always do."