This be finished. Finto. Done-ola. Hope you enjoyed.
"Stop disrupting things, Jeff!" Sara called from the kitchen, dropping a plate in the process of admonishing him. She huffed and bent to pick up the shattered pieces. How ironic, shattered pieces... picking them up. Sara chuckled to herself.
He laughed deeply and looked over at her. "Give me a break, Sara. I haven't seen you... in a gazillion years. I'm just making a thorough inspection of your... living territory." He balanced himself on his tip toes as he perused her bookshelves.
"Says the zoologist," Sara quipped, tossing a dish cloth at his head. She went about drying the rest of the dishes and placing them in the cupboard while he did nothing to help. Typical.
It had been nearly six years since she had seen her brother. Teaching abroad apparently wasn't conducive to visiting one's sister. Jeffrey smiled over at her and began flipping through some of the forensic journals lying on her coffee table. His feet propped up, head back, he relaxed into the cushions and listened as his sister went about her severely shaky domestic duties.
While Sara was growing up, Jeffrey Sidle had been overseas. It had been his plan that once he left high school to join the Marines. Not only would he receive money to go to college, he would be able to get away from his parents permanently, see the world, get to do exciting things.
The one thing he regretted was leaving his younger sister at home with their parents. That thought plagued him for as long as he was away, so to rid himself of some of the guilt he would send her checks and letters, pictures and trinkets from around the globe. In Japan he'd found the cutest parasol, and though it had cost an arm and a leg to ship, it had arrived on her birthday and she'd awoken to a present. She hadn't gotten one of those in the longest time.
She still had it. It hung on the wall in her bedroom, pretty and green, clashing with her light violet walls.
When Sara was put into foster care, Jeff had returned home but the state had refused him custody. So though she lived with strangers, she would see her brother on weekends and they'd go to ball games, do homework, go running.
Jeff eventually left the Marines and went to college, majoring in Zoology at the University of Arizona. He hated being so far away from his family-his sister-but he had to follow his dream. When he made it out with a graduate degree and fifty thousand dollars in students loans (paid off eventually by the Marines) he wondered what to do with his life. Sara suggested he apply for teaching positions because he'd always been great with her. "I mean," she'd said at one point on a long distance phone call, "You're the reason I mastered my multiplication tables."
In 1995 her brother accepted a position at the American University at Paris.
They sent letters back and forth and though she wanted to do it on her own, Jeff insisted that he help her pay for college if only to make up for all of those years he wasn't there for her.
She went to San Francisco and he wrote a book and he visited her once, Christmas '97. He brought her a necklace and some books and she got him a twelve volume leather-bound set detailing obscure animals in Africa. They ate turkey and stuffing and watched bad movies and laughed-laughed a lot.
He went away and the letters started up again, his a page or two long, hers chapters. She wrote of school and work, how she loved work. Jeff could feel the passion for her profession even through the words on paper and every time he read of her cases, he smiled and shook his head, finding it amusing that his sister could find so much joy in death.
At one point she began to write of a seminar, studying under an "amazing man" and "renowned entomologist." But soon it dissolved into simply talk of him, of a book or an article he had sent her, how grateful that she was for his tutelage. At one point she had written to say that she was leaving San Francisco, possibly for good to go to Las Vegas and work for him.
Jeff had simply raised his brow and shook his head, wondering who would quit their job to follow a teacher they had really only known briefly. Then again, his sister was nothing if not dedicated and if that was what she wanted, then that was what she would eventually get.
A year or two went by and her handwriting became more fluid and she began to write more of the what if's. His sister began to wax poetic and he began to wonder why she was still single. Smart, pretty, passionate, any man would be lucky to have her but for some reason, she was still single. He could never for the life of him figure out why.
Jeff swung his feet off of the table and walked to the kitchen, hip checking Sara out of the way so he could get to the refrigerator. He reached inside and grabbed a bottle of water, hopping up onto the counter, watching her wipe down the table.
"So," he began, taking another chug of the water. "We going out tonight?"
Sara nodded, smiled and tossed the sponge into the sink. "That we are," she replied and disappeared around the corner.
Jeff hopped down from the counter and again walked into the living room. "Huh," he huffed and grabbed a book from the bookcase. It was tattered. He flipped to the front cover; it was some obscure entomology textbook. Finding himself with nothing better to do and hearing Sara turn on the shower, he flipped the cover open only to be confronted with an inscription in frighteningly neat handwriting.
'Sara,' it said. 'This may help to answer some of those questions you're always asking. Grissom.' And that was it. No 'from', no 'love', just Grissom. Just Grissom... that's all he was, all he knew of the man, he was called Grissom. And his sister was receiving... gifts from him. There had to be more to it.
Jeff sat back and cracked the book, reading a passage about centipedes. It was terribly boring, but he just kept on reading, right through the obnoxious sound of the hair dryer and for the fifteen minutes that it took Sara to pick out an outfit. Finally, she emerged from the bedroom and noticed the textbook her brother was perusing.
She smiled and he held it up for her to see and she nodded and walked away when he pointed to the inscription at the beginning.
"Wait, wait," Jeff shouted. "Sis... who is this Grissom guy, anyway?"
Sara smirked, a tiny little flush licking her cheeks. "That's why you're here, bro." Sara joked. Turning to her brother, she grinned. "He's my fiancé, and we're having dinner with him tonight, so move your ass."
Mentor, friend, pseudo father... boss, crush, lover and fiancé. Grissom was all those things... and now he was hers.