The diner was blissfully quiet and wonderfully upscale and Sara found herself for one moment pulled towards the warm coffee smell emanating from the kitchen. Then she was pulled back in by the warm cinnamon that his body gave off, to his low breathing, his broken frame.
He had asked her to meet him there, voice low, eyes even lower, somewhere on the floor. They needed to talk, he said, about so many things. He had to get it all out before it killed him; and it was, killing him, he said. It was eating away at him, painfully, endlessly, hopelessly.
Sara sat down slowly, giving him a chance to react-somehow, anyhow-but when he didn't she sighed and placed her hands on top of his on the table. It was a long, warm moment as they sat there, nearly hand in hand. But not, never hand in hand, never walking along together.
As Sara glanced down at the table, he glanced up and his eyes were drawn to the angry scratches on her face, the bandaged wound on her upper arm. 'Careless,' he thought, but even as he thought it he knew it wasn't true. It wasn't her carelessness, it was the world's.
Just two years ago an officer had failed to properly secure the scene and Catherine was attacked. The LVPD now had another mark on its record...
Earlier that evening veteran officer David Crantz had failed to check both the basement and the attic of a home that Greg, Sara and Grissom were about to investigate.
The man who had descended on Sara had been big, utterly enraged, half of his body covered by black cotton, the other half donning blatant camouflage. In her defense, she had done her best to fight him off, but that had only enraged him more. She screamed, and screamed and on the third scream both Grissom and Greg went dashing into the home, every hair on both of their bodies standing completely on end.
Greg had dashed into the center of the room and yelled, successfully distracting the man enough that he pulled himself off of Sara and went for Greg. Thinking quickly, on the verge of a nervous breakdown he fired his weapon at the ceiling and the perp froze just as Jim Brass rushed in to take the man down.
But Sara was already on the floor, bleeding from a wound to her head and a stab to her arm. Her breaths were shallow and as her eyes fluttered shut the last thing she saw was Greg scrambling on hands and knees to reach her.
Grissom just stood and watched as police and paramedics buzzed around him, Greg speaking words of evidence and contamination and ambulances. 'Hospital,' he yelled, 'one of us has to go to the hospital!' But Grissom, he just stood there and surveyed the wreckage, the near carnage. Greg took one look at his supervisor, glared and followed Sara into the ambulance, shaking his head and wondering what the hell was wrong with Grissom.
He'd come to soon enough in order to collect the evidence and yell at Brass a few times, and then trudged back to the lab, ignoring the questions he received. Grissom sat in his office for the next few hours, called the hospital a few times and brooded in that particular way he was prone to do.
Sara had returned to the lab later that week, bandaged and sore but no more worse for the wear. Grissom seemed to be the one who was coming unglued. Years of stress began to gnaw at his skull, prompting the beginnings of what he knew was bound to be a migraine. That's when he had decided to unload, unhinged, let it all flow; that is why he asked her to breakfast. If they had to sit at the table until it was time for work again, the air would be clear, if not just for him then completely for her.
The waitress ambled over to their table and still, Grissom did not speak. Sara took the opporunity to order them both waffles and coffee and sat back in the booth, hands still on his waiting for him to speak. The lines on his face would not let up and made him look ten years older. She wanted nothing more than to reach forward and smooth them from his face, tell him that she was fine. Sore, true, but fine.
The coffee came before he had a chance to gather all of his thoughts together. There was no way that the entirety of his soul could simply be spilled over coffee and waffles on the outskirts of Vegas. But she had come, knowing what he was going to say, and he supposed that was something.
Something had to count for, well... something.
He watched her under the veils of his eyelids; she added cream and sugar to both their coffee and stirred. She knew how he took his coffee and it unsettled him. With the faint scratch of porcelain on the tabletop she slid his mug to him and waited for him to drink. He didn't, so she did, and when she was through with that, she spoke. "I'm fine, you know that."
Irony was never something that Grissom could deal with easily. It didn't seem to be a natural occurrence. Irony made him believe in chance and superstition, two things that almost frightened him more than Sara did.
Maybe she didn't love him. Maybe she'd grown to love him even more, he couldn't tell because he couldn't see her eyes, didn't want to see her eyes.
"You're not fine, I'm not fine." Grissom paused and clamped his jaw tightly. "You're not fine."
Sara's brow lifted but she didn't want to press him. She'd do this on his terms since he was the one to finally suggest actually talking. The waffles came and Sara pushed her food around on her plate while Grissom didn't touch his. Not letting hers go to waste, she added syrup and some whipped cream and began cutting her waffles up into little pieces. "Maybe you should eat," she deadpanned, spearing a piece of the food and shoving it into her mouth.
Grissom's eyes flitted to hers briefly and then back down his plate. Regarding the golden confection wearily, he added an adequate amount of syrup and began cutting it up.
"So, care to tell me..." she began with a quirky little smile that made him perk up, just a bit. "Anything?"
Grissom tested his coffee and leaned back in the booth. "I saw you die."
"Griss, I... don't know what to tell you. I'm pretty sure I'm alive."
"In my head, Sara. I saw you die in my head." Sara eyed him cautiously. She wasn't exactly sure what he was trying to say to her.
"I go to bed every night wanting you." The way his words came out it sounded like he was talking about the coffee, the waffles in front of him, the Cubs. It sounded so banal and so basic that Sara nearly missed the implication of his words. But how was she supposed to react to that? Was there even an adequate way to go about answering. She didn't know, she didn't know...
"Okay..."
Grissom placed his hands at his temples and pressed there, squeezing his eyes shut as he spoke his next words, still confused, still so scared. "And then I wonder why I just want and don't have..." His voice was wistful and lovely and she wanted to wrap herself in it, if only for a moment.
"And why is that?" An honest question, and one she felt that she was obligated to hear.
Grissom pursed his lips and finished the coffee. "I don't know actually. Maybe there isn't a reason and I think there is, who knows."
Sara bit the side of her lips and tucked her arms across her chest. She held his gaze for a moment and then glanced out the window, mindless of the harsh sunlight filtering in. "You know."
Grissom smiled, Sara didn't smile back. "I don't."
"Okay, well... if that's all you can say then I guess we're still at something of an impasse."
"Two roads diverge in a single wood and I, I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference," Grissom said, leaning forward in the booth, mindful of the tiny upturn of her lips, the softening of her eyes.
"I think I'll ignore the fact that you just referred to me as the overgrown and frightening path." She licked a smudge of syrup off of her upper lip with her tongue. She licked her lips and he was seeing colors, so on the verge of tears, ready to give into the spectrum and break down.
Grissom began, with a chuckle, "You are frightening!" He continued to laugh and her slight smile turned into a brilliant grin.
Sara leaned in and grasped his hands again. "I'm not overgrown." Then she paused and thought about what she had just said. "That sounded incredibly awkward, forget I said it."
They were both silent for a few more moments and Sara dropped her eyes to the hideous tablecloth and studied it for long minutes. Grissom's thumb eventually snaked around and began brushing the top of her hand. "You die every night in my head..." he whispered.
Sara's eyes met his slowly, her hand grasping his thumb and squeezing tight. "Well then, maybe we should work on that," she replied with a sweet smile.