Chapter Twenty-One

Great love and thanks go to Anais for taking over beta duties.

II

The seduction of Sara Sidle.

It was an objective Grissom had never thought his mind would formulate, but now it was there, refusing to go away no matter how hard he scrubbed. Almost like blood and to him, just as deadly.

So he might as well die.

Sara was smiling at him, seeming happy and bright, almost like the summer night around them. Maybe that was what she was, a summer night of sun for him to lose himself in, bury himself in, discover himself in. Sara Sidle, his weakness, desire, pleasure, death.

For all he had run away from her, here he was, watching her in the doorway to his room, her smile a sun in itself.

"Can I come in?" she asked again and he realised he hadn't said aloud what his mind had set as an objective.

"Of course."

She closed the door behind her, still smiling, still happy, still the beauty he didn't deserve. "Greg is busy seducing a young Norwegian lab tech."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Or perhaps she is seducing him, it's hard to say," she amended. "I thought you should know before you went to bed - the Norwegian lab got back to us on the buns. Definite traces of lithium."

"So we have our source."

"Yes. Kristin is set to recover; the hospital said we could see her tomorrow. Maybe she'll tell us who Anna got them from. But..."

"But?" he asked, watching her pace the floor of his hotel room slowly, pensively. "You think you know who it is already?"

"Who bakes for a young woman such as Anna? Not the boyfriend, I think. Friends, maybe, but they would probably just get it from a bakery. The mother is dead, so not her." She paused, looking at him with almost sorrow in her gaze. Sorrow for Anna, sorrow for the killer, he wasn't sure.

"And we're left with the grandmother," he concluded for her and she nodded slowly.

"Why do we kill those we love?" she asked quietly, but it seemed to be as much to the world in general as to him.

"Because humans are possessive, volatile and passionate," he replied, walking towards her. "Because the line between love and hatred is vague and wavering. Because love is pain. Because love is pleasure and pleasure makes fools of even the wise."

"Does it?" she whispered as he leaned against her, feeling her breath as a flash of heat tickling his skin.

"Yes," he whispered and kissed her.

Her lips were as he remembered them, soft and yielding to his one moment, demanding and rough against his the next. He could almost feel the sun on her, that taste of heat on her tongue as he explored her. Midnight sun in a kiss. Mightnight seduction in Norway. She made a sound at the back of her throat that made his body shiver and he pressed her against the wall, supporting himself with a hand. He let the other cup a breast through her shirt and she arched breathlessly into the touch.

"More?" he whispered.

"More."

He fumbled slightly with the buttons of her shirt before he managed to open it, feeling clumsy and with fingers thick as lumber. Her bra was grey underneath, worn to work, not for romance, but that was a seduction too. Sara, so much like him. So much he hadn't dare risk being with her, for she would tear his walls down and leave him bare. He'd kept her out and somehow she'd snuck her way inside anyway.

Her skin was smooth under his fingertips, the little lines across it paths for him to explore. He could feel a scar just above her hip and he lowered his head to kiss it, kiss the pains that had made her Sara. He didn't want her to ever have suffered, but without that suffering, without those scars, she wouldn't be who she was, wouldn't be the one seducing him with a smile, a look, a touch.

He lifted his head up to her exposed breast and she clutched his hair and let out a breath that seemed to burn his heart to smouldering embers. Her skin tasted of the heat he felt and the salt of the nearby sea. No escape from the ocean in this country, its waves ever crashing and forming the land. No escape from her, her waves ever crashing and forming him.

What scared him was that he wasn't even sure he wanted to escape any more.

He wasn't quite sure whom had guided who to the bed, but suddenly he felt the soft mattress greet his back and Sara fell over him. She smiled as her hair fell around his face and she kissed the sides of his face, curling her fingers into his beard. She seemed so happy he just let her and watched, the vision of her almost more erotic than any touch.

'Almost,' he thought and felt his breath catch in his throat as her hands stroked his thigh.

"More?" she teased.

"More."

Her touch was torture, was pleasure, was too much and not enough. He strained against it and then he was bereft of it as she effectively stripped her clothes off, no thought for trying to be seductive. He found it even more so for that reason, fumbling with his own clothes as he watched. Sara didn't need to try to be seductive. She was seduction just living. Her skin was more flattering than any clothes could ever be and he burned it into his memories. Beautiful, passionate, dark, bright Sara. His Sara. His, his, his.

She straddled his lap and when he sank into her, her fingernails tore into the flesh of his back. Pain and pleasure, as it would have to be between them.

"Grissom," she whispered and her eyes were brighter than the sun and burned him even more and he could feel nothing, could feel everything, could feel her, could feel the waves battering him and he was floating and drowning and calling her name, her, her, her...

She rested against him afterwards, her hands against his chest and hair spread across the pillow. He stroked his thumb across her wrist, feeling her veins, her life's blood. A fragile barrier of soft skin protecting her life and it didn't feel like enough under his touch. Too fragile and nothing he could do to protect it but be near. And no guarantees he would always be near, that she would allow him to be near.

'That is why you must let her go before she leaves you,' a darkness whispered in his mind and he clutched her wrist in his hand, feeling her pulse still in rapid gallop. So easy to take a life. So hard to live it.

So dangerous to be human. Humans loved, felt, despaired, killed. Not like insects, merely existing and doing their job, living and dying so others could live and die. Living and mating, seeking symmetry in their mates, and when finding it, following the same rituals. Predictable, simple, beautiful.

Not like evolved humans, complicated and unpredictable, though still beautiful. Still seeking the symmetry, but giving it other names. Comparability, attraction, love.

Love.

He stroked the invisible hairs along her arm and she looked up at him, eyes still clouded.

"What are you thinking, Grissom?"

"Of bugs," he answered truthfully before he could check himself, before he could listen to his inner demons.

"Bugs? I guess this is what I get for bedding an entomologist," she said dryly.

"I'm thinking we're a wing each of the same moth," he went on, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

"That's either very creepy or very sweet."

He chuckled softly, watching her fingers curl one of his chest hairs. For all the dark fears within, he felt at this moment almost content, almost happy. Almost human, the human work had isolated from him. Or perhaps that was merely an excuse. Humans sought excuses all the time, covering their simple answers.

'I wanted to,' he thought. The simple answer. He wanted to be distant and cold and a bug working its purpose in life. He wanted to have relationships he could let go of again easily. Terri. Heather. Johanna, so long ago. Virginia, who had been a ghost like him. And he wanted to have Sara Sidle too, even if she could never be what he had planned in his mind. Even if he would hurt her, had hurt her.

Perhaps he was more human than he had thought.

He kissed her shoulder lazily and listened to her breath slow and become what some might call a snore and he just found another Sara thing about her. Tomorrow she might be confronting another killer, perhaps confronting her own demons through it. Her own mother.

He was still surprised she had told him about that, shared something so revealing even if he had insisted. The words could never be taken back, the insight they offered never closed. But she was not afraid, his Sara. She had braved being known to him. She braved empathy for the victims, even knowing it could burn her out. Perhaps she hoped it would burn her own scars away too. Ashes of a life.

Was that what Anna's grandmother now clung to? Ashes of a life, ashes and memories and guilt? A human could exist on that, he knew. For a little while. But the wind would tap against a window, a grandmother would see her granddaughter and be captured, a daughter would find a father and know what was missing in her life, a woman would smile across a room to her older colleague and seduce him, a kiss would taste of sun and promise a changed tomorrow. Life would burn and beckon and entice.

You could exist on ashes. You could only live in the fire, pleasure and pain both.

'The seduction of being human,' he thought and finally slept.