Twelve Months until the Final Goodbye
Chapter 4- The Courtship and Marriage of Grissom and Sara
The first date went so well, that Grissom asked her on their second date he stopped the car at her apartment. She agreed to the date before he cut the engine.
On their second date, Grissom took Sara to the woods for an evening of star gazing. Sara had wondered briefly if Grissom remembered the comment she made about this spot being an ideal make-out location. She was thrilled, when Grissom's toe curling kisses reassured her that he did not forget that comment. The spent the evening kissing, talking and pointing out constellations and telling their stories. Sara especially liked Grissom's game of tracing each constellation with kisses on the back of her neck.
For their third date, Sara invited Grissom to a drive-in to watch 'Batman Begins'. However, if you asked them how they liked the movie, all they would have been able to do is blush and shrug as they spent the movie making out and steaming up the windows of Sara's Denali.
For their fourth date, Grissom invited Sara to his townhouse for dinner and an evening of the Discovery Channel. Sara absently asked Grissom what she should bring with her that night, trying to guess if he would prefer pizza or Chinese. When suggested a toothbrush and a change of clothes, she nearly fell over.
The day of their fourth date, they ended up working a double shift that involved a wretchedly stenched decomp. Sara was on the verge of tears thinking their date was ruined before it even began. Her despair turned quickly to joy when Grissom surprised her at the end of the shift with a bag of lemons, and an invitation to shower at his house.
When Grissom and Sara got to his town home, they looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. Being a gentleman, he offered Sara the shower first. Sara, being a good team player, asked him to join her so they could ensure that they became as clean as possible. He joined her happily, and at the end of the shower, they were probably the cleanest either of them had been since their 1st bath as infants.
Sara and Grissom made love for the first time that night. Grissom was nervous. More nervous than he was the night he lost his virginity. When he had been nervous before his encounters with other women, he would just detach himself and look as the encounter as an experiment. He would touch and kiss the woman and note the reaction that each touch or caress rendered. He knew that this would not work with Sara. With Sara he could not compartmentalize. She deserved nothing less than all of him. His full mind and his full heart, along with his body.
After their shower, Sara rubbed Grissom down with her favorite lotion, he couldn't decide if he was more touched or aroused at her pampering him. When he realized that she was covered in Sara's unique scent, from the warmth of her hands and the honeysuckle cinnamon body lotion, he decided that arousal would win out this time. Eagerly Grissom returned the favor, slowly rubbing the lotion into her body. He used the self-control that kept him for making advances towards her all of those past years for good instead of heartbreak, by being able to continue the massage, occasionally using his lips where his hands had been. A man of lesser control would have thrown Sara down on the nearest flat surface and plunged his painful hardness into her, especially as she began to moan, especially as he began to rub the lotion into her small, but yearningly sensitive breasts. There would not have been a man or woman alive who would have blamed Grissom for losing control during the massage, especially as her moans became replaced by whimpers as he smoothed the lotion over her inner thighs using his hands. Even Job himself would have lost patience as he felt Sara quiver, when he used his lips to catch a drop of moisture that beaded down from the center of her sensual universe. But if Grissom knew one thing, it was that all of those years of self-control were about to have the payoff of a lifetime. Grissom stood up, looked Sara in the eyes and took her hand. He told her that he loved her, that she was beautiful, that her being there with him made his every dream come true. Then by the hand he led her to his bedroom, where Sara surprised him by pushing him down on the bed and straddling him, greedy with need. Grissom sat up, and wrapped his arms around Sara, feeling her ride up and down his steel center, and they began passionately kissing, lips and tongues exploring each other until they each exploded in the light of love, Sara first, with the vibrations of her body pushing Grissom over the edge. Sweaty and satisfied, they stayed sitting up, kissing each other, and stroking each other's face, enjoying the way that the moonlight from Grissom's window silhouetted their bodies, until they were ready to start again. Grissom was surprised at how quickly he was ready to make love again. He gently laid Sara on her back and lay on top of her. Kissing her gently as he entered her again and they joined together quietly, content in feeling each other breathe and react to the hardness and moistness of the other until they both climaxed, Grissom first, and Sara moved by the thunderous pulsing of Grissom's orgasm. Sated, they lay on the bed, holding hands and talking quietly about everything and nothing, until they each drifted off to sleep.
Before their fourth date, either Grissom or Sara would have described themselves as very sexual beings. After their fourth date, it would be one of the first adjectives that came to their minds.
After their fourth date, Grissom went to Ecklie and told him about the relationship. He let Ecklie know that he would leave the lab, before anyone hurt Sara over their relationship. Ecklie, greatly mellowed after the ordeal with Nick, was agreeable to the situation. Although Ecklie would rather die than admit it, he was jealous of Grissom. Not Grissom's intellect or scientific skills, as a casual observer would imagine, but the way Grissom had the total confidence and loyalty of his team, despite his lack of appreciable people skills.
Grissom worked out a solution to the supervisor/subordinate issue. He split the night shift into two teams. Grissom supervised, Sofia, Nick, and Warrick. Catherine supervised Greg and Sara. Before the change happened, Grissom talked to both Sara and Catherine separately and together about their issues with each other. Sara and Catherine were both too stunned at Grissom noticing their dynamic and the fact that he had paid attention to their issues to argue with each other. Once Grissom left the room, they went out for a run and worked things out for themselves. They liked each other enough to agree that they would not always get along, but like any good family could have their fights and get over their differences.
Catherine was sad about officially losing her place as Grissom's most trusted confidante, but her sadness was eclipsed at her joy at seeing her friend and mentor filled with joy and delight at the change in his life.
After their fourth date, Grissom and Sara told the team that they were dating. Word spread through the lab like wildfire/ Grissom couldn't decide whether to be angry or amused as Trudy, the personnel manager came in and kissed him and Sara and thanked them for making her the winner in the Geeklove office pool. Apparently after Sara arrived people could pick a week out of each year and place $100 on that week. With five years of unresolved Grissom/Sara issues, and a favorable interest rate, Trudy won over $26,000. She began planning a trip to Aruba and invited Nick.
After their first date, they began to have breakfast together every day after shift. Sometimes they would go to the diner, but they would mostly get coffee and muffins and find a place to people watch, each trying to outdo the other in finding the best location.
After one month of dating, Grissom asked Sara to live with him. As much as he treasured the memories of their first and subsequent nights together in his townhouse and her apartment, he wanted the place that they would create their new life together with all of the wonderful new memories he was anticipating to be absent of the longing, yearnings and hurt feelings that the walls of their current homes held.
They bought a charming three bedroom bungalow, with a yard, trees, and a built in home office. Remembering a story Sara told him of being jealous as a child of a friend with a canopy bed, he surprised her with a king canopy bed, with gauzy purple curtains surrounding the bed. They both enjoyed the mission style headboard, and enjoyed taking turns tying each other to it with silk scarves.
Sara surprised Grissom, with a refrigerator for their home office, so he could keep his experiments close to his workspace and avoid fights about separating the food from the blood.
They did have their fights, and learned to fight fair. Grissom learned to never eat the chocolate from Sara's secret stash, as he found out it was her emergency PMS chocolate. Sara learned that even though Grissom acted unfazed by his experiments, that the meat had to go in the food refrigerator.
Grissom got Sara interested enough in crossword puzzles to sit with him each Sunday and do the New York Times puzzle with him. The fact that Sara insisted that they do the puzzle naked probably helped. Grissom would keep score and the winner would choose the bedroom activities for later in the evening. Sara tried to get Grissom interested in doing the yoga she relied on to keep her relaxed and flexible. Unfortunately, every time she tried to show him downward dog, he would grab her from behind and barely get her yoga pants off before he would take her.
After three months Grissom proposed. He took her to the body farm, because she always wanted to go. He had packed a picnic and had planned to propose to her in the same place they went stargazing, but he was so overcome by her joy and excitement about being at the body farm that while he got down on one knee and proposed to her right there in front of a group of decaying partiers. Sara happily accepted, pulled him to his feet and kissed him. The ring he gave her was beautiful, a one carat diamond in a basket cut so she could wear it under her gloves, with sapphires on either side in a platinum band.
One month later they married. Even though they were nocturnal creatures, they had the wedding on a Sunday morning so the entire nightshift could participate. They decided to get married in a cottage by Lake Mead. Catherine was the maid of honor and Nick the best man. Lindsey was the flower girl, and to keep her protests about being too old to be flower girl at bay, Greg was the ring bearer. Greg was adoring, Lindsay was cooperative and Catherine was grateful. Doc Robbins became ordained over the internet so he could marry the two of them.
Warrick was in charge of the music, and played jazz music of his own composing on the piano, with some friends he jammed with accompanying him. All of the men in the wedding party wore purple pansies as boutonnières. Nick escorted Grissom's mother to her seat and then he and Grissom took their place at the altar. Greg and Lindsey walked down the aisle as Lindsey scattered rose and pansy petals. Catherine walked down the aisle. The gathering of friends and family stood, as Warrick picked up his electric guitar and began to play Pachibel's Canon on it. A hush fell over the group as they saw Sara enter the room on Brass' arm. When Sara asked him to give her away, he was so moved he cried. With Sara on his arm, the smile on Brass' face seemed to melt away a decade of cynicism and hardness from his soul. When he looked at Sara beaming in her gown and veil as a beam of sunlight hit her face, he felt a strange sense of peace in his soul, as if an ancient wrong was made right.
Sara was beauty herself. The gown she picked was simple; it had an empire waist and a long skirt that flowed gently. Sara secretly loved the novels of Jane Austen, and when she tried the dress on in the bridal store, felt like an Austen heroine. Catherine had styled her hair half up and half down and had secured her veil with a small crystal set headband.
When Sara saw her Grissom waiting at the end of the aisle, her face lit up with a smile that turned her into the walking embodiment of every poem, sonnet and song about beauty.
They were joined in marriage by Doc Robbins, choosing traditional vows. They had written their own vows, but being private people, decided to say them to each other that evening in the privacy of their honeymoon suite. After being pronounced husband and wife they kissed passionately, with such pure hearts, that it made everyone in the room think of the most perfect kiss they had ever received.
During the reception, their were toasts, and stories, dancing and jokes, hugs and tears of joy as they all celebrated the love of their friends and the witnessing of what many of them considered a miracle; unrequited love becoming whole.
They did all the traditional wedding things, since Grissom was secretly traditional. Sara tossed the bouquet; Grissom removed her garter, which was caught by Catherine and Warrick respectively.
When the cake was wheeled out, it was hard to tell who was more delighted, Grissom when he noticed that the cake was decorated with delicate renderings of ladybugs, butterflies and dragon flies, or Sara enjoying Grissom's delight.
Some found it odd that Sara still called her love Grissom, but she knew that Grissom was never thrilled with his name. Her pet name for him was Gilbug, and in bed she called him whatever endearment his body made her scream. Grissom called her Princess.
The reception seemed too long and too short at the same time. They enjoyed celebrating with their friends, but they were eager to be alone with each other. They said farewell to their final guests, and went to the honeymoon suite that was on the grounds of the resort. The honeymoon suite was a private cabin on the grounds of the lake.
Sara stood in front of Grissom in a short ivory nightgown. She normally did not like nightgowns, but figured that it would not be on long enough to annoy her. Grissom stood in front of her in the midnight blue silk boxers she had chosen for him. He liked the feel of the silk against his body, but preferred Sara to silk and hoped that he would feel her against him soon.
They stood holding each other's hands as they recited the vows they had wrote to each other. When they were done saying their vows, they held each other close and let their bodies make a second set of private vows.
TBC
A/N: If you like happy fluffy GSR stories make this your last chapter. For the angst muse, she is calling me. I am hoping to have the fifth and final chapter up soon.
