A/N This chap is dedicated to CSINut214. She veered me back on path when I was in a ditch. As always nothing, thanks to Smryzko and Cybrocat who are my trusty betas.

Angst and not so lovable Grissom ahead. Remember the man is in pain.

Your Adored One

Chapter 4

Grissom reached for his lighter. The lighter he had rarely used even when he smoked a pack a day. His grandfather's lighter had survived one war, an ocean crossing, Ellis Island and several pawnings to make it to Gil's hand when he turned twenty one. His mother had hesitated giving it to him believing that it would encourage his already obsessive habit of smoking.

Gil did nothing with temperance. He did not work, study or love with rationality. He only had two speeds. Blinding brilliance or morbid plodding. He was halfway through the pack that he had only bought at noon. He hated the smell and taste of clove cigarettes so he had switched to the awful Turkish ones preferred by his first love, Sarah Faruk. Saras. Two Saras in one lifetime was enough for one man. Two dark haired intense beauties who had captured him in an instant and destroyed him with flick of efficient words.

"Gil. I have to go home to get married."

"But you said…."

"I know what I said. I can't disappoint my family. You don't understand these things. It's just you and your mother. I have generations relying…expecting this marriage."

"But you don't love him."

She had laughed then. Wondering at how naive he was. People did not marry for love very often. At least not people she knew.

The Turkish cigarettes would not do now. Sara smoked Marlboros before she quit. He had ignored them in the store. Like he had ignored Sara for years. Men were foolish. His mother had told him that when he asked about his father.

"Gil, men are foolish. Don't be foolish."

He had never smoked inside. Never in his home or his dorm room or any apartment had he lived. Now he drove Sara from the walls and the sheets of his clean airy townhouse, any space she occupied with her scent. He poured smoke out of his lungs and directed it into corners and crevices.

He had bleached his sheets and washed them in hot water over and over again until regret began to work at the pit of his stomach. He found a stray pillowcase that still smelled of her. Now he slept with it clutched in one nicotine stained hand as he tossed and turned on the couch, in his office, anywhere but the bedroom.

She hardly ever spent the night. It was a contract, not a love affair. A union to fill needs. There was to be no blurred whimsical ideas about what they could be. They were what they were. Still the bedroom was hers. She owned him no matter what words were written on paper.

He pressed the long dark cylinder into a glass ash tray that he hid in an office drawer.

He ambled through the house still holding the ashtray with one thick hand wondering as he patted one pocket cigarette filled pocket. He went to his office not sure why he went through the ritual of flipping through his worn address book. He hardly forgot anything. His memory wasn't photographic but close. It had sharpened with age instead of diminished.

He ran a thick finger over the small white page. He dialed.

"Hello?"

"Hello. I need to see someone."

Silence.

"Now?"

"I don't know…"

"You don't know what you need?"

He felt juvenile and inane. He knew himself. It was really a farce. A trick he played on himself hoping to fool those around him, a covering worn between himself and the world between his skin and his soul.

"I told you what I need. I need to see someone."

"And I asked you when."

"Not there."

She took note of the edginess in his voice. She was a physician on the verge of unnecessary surgery.

"I don't send anyone out."

"We both know you have."

Her voice snaked around him like like the smoke from the now lit cigarette. She listened to the flinty sound as he played with the cheap lighter he kept in one pocket. Who was he hiding from? Sara? Himself?

"Perhaps I should do this myself…"

"No!"

In her vast office on the other side of town she flinched glad that he could not see her. She was surprised that his reflexive pessimism had not set in. He still held out hope. If Sara was ever to find out.

"Can you give me a couple of hours to pull this together?"

"Sure. How much is this going to cost me?"

"You don't care about that."

"It seemed right to ask. Maybe I will have to explain where the money went."

"I hope for that as much as you do. Dark hair?"

"I don't know…"

"Neither do I."

That they should have come to this place of confusion, she with her smothering intuitiveness. He with everything else necessary.

"I still think I should come." She tried again.

"I appreciate that. I could never explain that to her. That she would not understand."

"What about Catherine?"

"No!" He snapped and stubbed out the half smoked cigarette. He hefted a sturdy bottle of 11 year old single malt scotch from a low drawer and drank straight from the bottle. He had thrown out Sara's merlot and vodka days before.

"I just think there should be someone who understands you. Understands everything. You and Sara and all of this."

"Then find me someone."

He put the phone down and waited.

xxx

Heather looked across the room at Jacqueline. She barely met the other woman's eyes.

Her hair wasn't black like Heather's nor was it dark brown like Sara's. She was not a blonde exactly, nor was she a red head. Not that any of that mattered usually. If the client wanted a red head and their were none available they would create one for the hour or so he spent in the Domain.

Out calls were different. There was likely to be some consummation, some sexual contact; it was harder to give the allusion when one was laid bare so to speak.

Heather had found that people were very particular with regard to her specialty. They wanted it all to be authentic.

"This is your cute cop friend?" She asked watching her boss' eyes flit across the room.

"He's not a cop. He's a forensics expert."

Jacqueline nodded. "Okay…"

Heather pushed hair behind one ear and tapped out numbers on an imaginary calculator.

"He will pay twice your in house rate. I assume their will be some contract of sorts. You are okay with a short term submissive relationship?"

"Sure. Do I sign my real name?"

Heather shot her a look and relaxed as she saw the other woman tense.

"This is not a man you can lie to about anything. Do you understand me? Don't lie. If you don't want to answer say that."

Jacqueline nodded. "I don't understand. I thought you and he…"

Heather shook her head. She looked at the slender woman. She was nearly Sara's age. Not a girl. Gil would find someone under thirty offensive. She was bright and quick witted and knew how to morph depending on the situation. She would not play dumb. Gil would find that trite and irritating. He was not a man that needed intellectual superiority to validate himself. He needed other things. The most interesting one's always did.

There were only four women that Heather trusted to keep the secrets of her out calls. , Tabitha, Jessie and Jacqueline.

Usually she charged four times the in house rate but now it more medicinal than the business of erotica. She could not stomach making profit from the transaction. It would all go to Jacqueline.

"Don't lie to him." Jacqueline watched Heather. "Understood. How's he paying?"

Heather thought for a second. "I don't know. Cash I assume. He wouldn't want a record."

"Will he have enough on him? Or should I say something when I arrive?"

Heather shook her head again. "No. He's got enough on him. Nearly fifty. They always have enough cash for whatever."

Jacqueline liked that about her boss. The observations she passed on as a matter of happenstance. Heather was only a few years older than her but business had wizened her, perhaps made her a bit jaded.

"Is there anything else I should know?"

Heather looked at her well cut slacks. Her high heeled boots and long natural nails. "He's in love with someone. Perhaps a little obsessed."

"Is he married? Do they live together or something? I mean she's not going to walk in…"

Heather opened her top drawer and slipped long fingers toward the back. Success. Virginia Slims. Her mother's lighter was close at hand. She had stolen it from Marjorie Abramowitz when she was eighteen and still would not admit to having it.

"No. He's not married. They aren't together any longer."

"Thus the need for me. So she was into this kind of thing?"

"Yes. She was his equal in that respect."

"That's a shame. To lose someone that gets you. So many people don't get the person they claim to love. You look nervous."

"I am nervous." Heather lit and puffed, enjoying the time that the action gave her.

"Is he dangerous?"

Heather blew smoke away from the other woman. "Would I send you to someone I thought was dangerous?" Heather hedged.

Thankfully, Jacqueline acquiesced. "So what else do I need to know? He's in love. Why is that important if they aren't together anymore?"

"To protect yourself."

"He's just a client. I promise I won't fall in love." The younger woman laughed lightly determined to lighten the mood.

"I think every woman who knows Gil Grissom is a little in love with him." Heather stubbed the unsatisfying cigarette out in a dusty hand shaped ash tray.

Heather leaned back in her chair and blew out what was left of the smoke.

"You don't have to do this." She said suddenly. "I will do it myself. He'll be angry at first but I can calm him down."

"I thought you said he wasn't dangerous."

Heather gave a defeated shrug. "He's not a danger to me."

"Are you scared of him?"

Heather considered the question. "Mostly - no"

"What does that mean?"

"It means he's not himself and I have no business sending you out there." Heather patted her bare foot under her desk searching for shoes she had discarded hours before.

"Where's his lover?" Jacqueline didn't know why but she knew the adjective suited the situation."

"She left. I told you."

"I assume she has a key."

"That would be a safe assumption." Heather wondered why she had not thought of it.

"So you were going to send on an out call with a man who's is obsessed with a woman who may or may not be gone for good. And this woman who is probably just as intense as he is who has a key to place where I will most likely be tied up and nude getting my brains screwed out by her man who has paid me and was sent by his ex-lover."

Jacqueline laughed a hard laugh. "What the hell were you thinking boss lady?"

"I wasn't. I was thinking I have friend that needed a help. As such I should be the one helping, not you."

Jacqueline waved a hand. "On a scale of one to ten how afraid of him are you right now?"

Heather pulled on one high heel. "A two or a three."

"So that would put me at about a five. Is this physical fear? I mean do you fear for your safety at all?"

The other shoe slipped into place. "Not really. A little. Gilbert can be psychologically damaging when he's on his best behavior. Now…."

"I want triple the usual for in house. Not double." Jacqueline said thinking of the retainer she had broken and her last semester of grad school.

"What?"

"Look I can handle any emotional bullshit this guy deals out. And the physical stuff. Well, I do work in place where people whip one another. I figure the extra would be hazard pay if Mrs. Gil shows up."

"I will tell him to expect you."