Sara shook out her still-wet hair and threw her towel in the general direction of the clothes hamper. Padding back into her bedroom, she let out a deep sigh. This was not shaping up to be a good night, what with the nasty e-mails she'd gotten from Grissom that morning and the e-mail from Warrick she'd discovered just before she took her shower.
She hadn't heard from any of her Las Vegas friends other than Grissom for almost a week, so she had been surprised to see Warrick's name in her inbox. What he had written had left her not surprised, though, but absolutely livid, which was why she'd taken her shower after reading it: to allow herself some cool-down time before she dealt with it's topic.
Tugging on a pair of flannel pajama pants, she slid into her desk chair to re-read the thing in the hopes that she'd misinterpreted it the first time.
From: Brown, Warrick Brownw@lasvegas.cl.comDate: Thursday, August 7th, 2003 3:30 P.M.
To: Sara ssidle@hotmail.com
Subject: You've gotta do something
Sara,
I don't mean to be rude, but I'm gonna skip the formalities here and just get to the point: you need to talk to Grissom. Ok before you scoff, I'm not talking about the normal stuff about him being distant or distracted. I'm talking about something physical and real-life.
I don't know how much you know about Grissom's past (I definitely don't know shit about it except for the poker thing), but apparently he was a smoker until about the time he started working here in Vegas (got this info from Cath). So obviously he quit, and he hasn't smoked for like, 15 years . . .
. . . but he started again since you left. I'm not talking, "Oh, I'm stressed, let me have one cigarette to feel comforted"; I'm talking chain-smoking nicotine fiend. And he's snarky about it, too; nearly bit my head off when I told him he was gonna kill himself with the things.
Ok well that's not the point. The point is that we're all worried about him. I know that you know, and Cath knows, the dangers of smoking from firsthand experience, and it's just SO not good that he's picked this up again! I'm not blaming you or anything like that, seriously, it's just that you're the only person he'll listen to about most things and, well, we were kinda hoping you could talk to him about it. Maybe you can at least plant the seed in his head.
I know that you care about Grissom and what happens to him, so please just give it a try. Thanks, Sara – you know we all appreciate this.
Warrick
Nope, she hadn't misread it. Grissom was smoking again. That hypocrite, after the stern lecture he'd given her a few years ago! "You're wasting your money and your body, Sara . . . have you seen what tar does to a pair of lungs, Sara?. . . You should quit now, Sara, before you do yourself serious damage." Hah, and now he was back to it.
She wondered what had caused the reversal. He had definitely been anti-smoking three years ago, and she hadn't even seen him look longingly at a pack since then, but now suddenly he was chain smoking? There was something very wrong with this picture.
Checking the clock, she checked to see if she had enough time to deal with this now, before she had to go in to work for the night. She did. Flipping open her cell phone, she dialed.
"Hello?" Grissom said, picking up after three rings.
"Put it out," Sara said flatly.
"Um . . . what? Sara? Is that you?"
"I said put it out," she hissed into the phone.
"What are you talking about?" Despite the confused tone he was affecting, she could still hear that slightly high-pitched quality of his voice that always indicated that he was feeling guilt.
"Grissom, I'm serious. Put it out now, or I'm hanging up and plotting ways to make your life hell."
There was silence for a few seconds, then a sigh. "There," Grissom said irritably, "I'm putting it out. I take it that someone ratted me out?"
"Is it really out?" She knew it probably wasn't. "Grissom, I can practically still feel it burning. Put out the damn cigarette!"
"Hmph. Fine." This time she could hear him exhaling the last lungful of smoke and the muffled crinkle of a cigarette being snuffed out. "Now answer my question: did someone rat me out to you?"
"No, Gris, I used my latent psychic powers. Of course someone from up there let me know, and before you ask, no I won't divulge my source. So now, tell me, what the hell is going on over there?"
"Nothing is going on, Sara; why do you ask? Don't you have better things to do than harass me about my bad habits?"
"Not when it's a bad habit you haven't been troubled with for fifteen years, then you suddenly pick up again with a vengeance."
"I never should have told you about that; I knew it! That's the last time I share stuff with you about my past."
Sara was stunned into silence for a moment. "Excuse me?" When there was no answer, she tried again. "What's wrong with you today, Grissom? Suddenly you've done an about-face from what you were yesterday. Tell me what's going on. Now."
"Listen, Sara . . ."
"Don't you 'Listen, Sara' me, Grissom! I had to listen to your damn lecture about the evils of smoking when I was quitting, and now you're damn sure going to hear mine now that you seem to have a death wish!"
She paused a second, trying to contain her building anger, then continued, "But first, I want to know why you're so mad at me all of a sudden. What was with the e-mails, Gris?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said defiantly.
Sara ground her teeth. "Grissom, I am going to put this phone down for exactly five seconds, and when I pick it back up you'd better be ready to explain yourself to me." Without waiting for his answer, she dropped the phone onto her desk and counted off five seconds. Then, picking it back up and putting it to her ear, she said, "Well?"
"If you don't want to talk to me, Sara, then get off the phone. I'm sure you have better things to do, like ogle your CSIs."
She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a second, then put it back to her mouth and said, "Uh-huh. And now we seem to be getting to the heart of the matter. You're jealous."
"I'm not jealous; that's ridiculous! I have no claim on you to begin with, so I have no right to be jealous."
Sara snorted. "Right, Gris. Sure. You know, you could've fooled me; I was kinda under the impression that you did have a claim on me, at least based on our e-mails this week."
Grissom was silent, and she was sure she could picture what he was doing: trying to compose his face into a semblance of normality, and hoping that it would help his voice do the same. "Were you?" he finally said coolly. "That's not the impression your last e-mail gave to me."
"I assume that you're referring to the one I wrote introducing my team, and not the one I sent this morning, cursing you out?"
"Yes."
"You know, Grissom . . . you need to chill out. You really have to . . ."
She was caught off-guard when he cut her off with a strangled sound and growled, "I do not need to chill out! I am perfectly chilled, thank you very much. What is it with you people?"
Oh boy. "Are you sitting down, Gris?"
"Why?"
"Because if you are, I want you to lean back for a minute and just relax. If you're not, I want you to sit down. You're going to pop a blood vessel at the rate you're going. Are you relaxing now?"
"Trying to," he answered grudgingly.
"Good. Thank you. Now, let's try to deal with this rationally, rather than screaming at each other, ok? Because we both know that I always win screaming arguments between us, and I figure I should give you a fair chance this time."
" 'This time'? Gee, thanks," he growled, but his voice was beginning to lose the sharp edge it had acquired during the past few minutes.
Sara sighed. "No more coffee for you tonight. Now," she said briskly, "please – notice that I'm saying 'please' – talk to me and explain what upset you so much from my last e-mail."
Grissom let out a deep sigh, and Sara felt a pang of sympathy. She could imagine how he felt; she had probably felt the same thing when he had talked so "objectively" about how "interesting" Lady Heather was.
"It sounded," he finally said slowly, "like you were purposely trying to make me jealous. With the way you talked about all those men, I mean."
"Grissom, I . . ."
"Wait, Sara, and let me finish. It sounded like you were trying to make me jealous with your descriptions, and then you segued right into flimsy reasons why you want to keep a distance between us, and . . ."
"No," Sara said shortly. "Quiet. Now it's my turn to talk. I was not trying to make you jealous, first of all. I purposely corrected the impression that I was checking Sam out so you wouldn't think that I was. All I was doing was telling you what I saw and then what I inferred."
"Ok, fine," he said in a voice that clearly said that it wasn't "fine", "then how do you explain how you then launched into a page about how you aren't interested in being anything more than friends?"
Sara couldn't contain the disbelieving laugh. "Are you kidding me?"
"Um . . . about what?"
"About the fact that Gil Grissom, great Yoda of forensic detection, leapt to numerous conclusions by trying to read into what was said and using his emotions to interpret them?"
Grissom was silent.
"Ok, so you're not kidding," Sara said after a few seconds. "Well, I'm telling you right now, get that idea out of your head. That is NOT what I said. You, Grissom, are 'getting too emotionally involved in this case'"
"Okay," he cut in, "enough with the gloating. So maybe I read just a little too much into it, but the facts are still the same. You're attracted to this Sam person, and his friends Mark and Jack, and you are only interested in being friends with me."
"Grissom. I'm going to try this one more time, and then I am going to come through the phone and beat it into your head with the butt of my gun: I did not say I was attracted to any of my CSIs. I also did not say that I 'was only interested' in being friends. What I said, if you'd bothered to read it without prejudice, is that I'm jealous of Sam's hair, I like Mark's tattoo, and I think Jack likes Sophie. I said the part about being friends 'for now'," she said, emphasizing the last two words, "because right now I want to stick with being friends. Because I'm not ready right now to give you control over me again."
"But I'm . . ."
" . . . Not using any control over me. I've heard it before, Grissom, and maybe I even believe it this time. But face it, that is what I said in my e-mail, and that is what I meant in my e-mail. You got upset about nothing, Gris!"
"Fine," he sighed. "Maybe I did. You obviously know that I've invested a lot of emotion into this relationship, and maybe I was jumpy, since it's the first time I've done that in a lot of years."
"So you admit that I'm right?"
"Stop rubbing it in, Sara, I'm serious. I don't appreciate it. Now, can I get off this phone and get myself ready for work?"
"Well geez, Gris, don't let me keep you or anything. I'd hate to keep you away from getting ready for work, seeing as how you just tried to convince me that I'm almost as important to you as work is."
"I didn't mean it that way."
Sara sighed. "I know. Go on, get dressed and make your coffee. I expect an e-mail later on explaining your idiocy in more detail."
Grissom, surprisingly, had no retort for that. "Okay, Sara. Good night, then."
As Grissom took the phone away from his ear, Sara suddenly remembered that they hadn't dealt with the issue that she'd called about to begin with. "Grissom!" she shouted, hoping the phone wasn't too far from his head yet.
His voice came back through the receiver after a moment. "What?"
"Put out the one you just lit up. And don't you dare light another one. I'll know if you do, and I will get you when you least expect it. You know it's bad for you, and maybe you started up again because you were trying to deal with stress over me or something, but things are cleared up now, right? At least partly?"
"Sure," he said noncommittally.
"Then I better not hear about you lighting up again, because you have no excuse and I am going to be really fucking pissed if you go and get yourself lung cancer over this shit! Got it?"
Grissom chuckled, relieved that they were back on normal territory: Sara telling him what was best for him. "Got it, Sara. I'll talk to you later."
"Damn straight," she said, and hung up.
"Well," Sara said to the wall, after contemplating it in silence for a few minutes, "that didn't go as bad as it could have. Good job, Sidle." She reached up and patted herself on the back, smiling for the first time in hours.