The
Passing of Seasons
by Camilla Sandman
II
Summer
II
Bugs could live a lifetime in a summer, the heat the frames of their life. Maturing and mating in a life in micro before the cold crawled in with the wind.
At eight, he found a dead butterfly during a summer at his aunt's, the leaves falling in the wind as tears of the trees. He hadn't cried, merely watched it until the light faded and an abrupt wind tossed leaves and the dead alike further down the road. Even then, he had found it beautiful. It lived for what it was meant for, no more and no less.
A lifetime in a summer.
At eight, Gil Grissom knew envy.
II
"When are we going to sleep together?"
She stood in the heat and it wavered around her, like a firestorm spreading out from her. Strands of her hair clung to her face and the sun clung to her, seeking the brightness in her eyes. Her lips were curved in that faint smile she seemed to give to him these days, the smile that filled him with equal parts pride and fear.
"Sara..."
"Simple question, Grissom."
But nothing was ever simple with her. The years had made it complicated, he had made it complicated, her past had made it complicated.
"I'm not sure," he said, wondering why they were having this conversation now in the raging sun, halfway between the shades of his house and his car.
"What do you need to be sure of?"
She was growing bolder with her questions, as if each time he touched her she grew in determination. Each time he touched her, he grew more accustomed to liking it. Soon, it will almost be a habit. Still he was holding back. Old habits didn't give in to new without a fight.
"That I can stop snoring?" he suggested.
For a moment, her face was merely a mask, telling him nothing. "You'll have to practice, then. Or I will have to buy earplugs."
Then she smiled, and the smile was a threat and a promise both.
At fifty, Gil Grissom knew anticipation.
II
The heat went where the light did and battled the air conditioning and shades of the city for domination. It was summer in Las Vegas and people seemed too weighed down with heat even to commit murders. And so, the lab was unusually quiet, people working on old cases under the hissing of fans. Hush inside, roar outside.
And Sara Sidle trying to seduce him.
Oh, it wasn't perhaps seduction in the normal, accepted way. It was seduction in the Sara way, especially crafted for Grissom madness. A little smile across yellow tape, a little breath in his air as she stood much too close, a little touch just walking by. A little temptation in her eyes.
He wasn't sure anyone at work could tell. She was efficient, dedicated and the only real difference was that she now read entomology books and romance novels alike in the breakroom. Every time he saw her huddled over, eyes on a page, he knew she had taken them from his shelves. She was pushing into his life, quietly, but he couldn't stop her anymore than he could stop the sun.
And like the insects of summer, he lived in it.
He returned the smiles across yellow tape, mingled his breath with hers as she stood much too close, returned the touched when she walked by. And he could see the mirror of his eyes in the mirror of hers.
He drove her home after work, sometimes, kissing her on the steps of her home, sun framing them. And one day, he didn't break it off, didn't pull away and drive home. Every summer came to a mate. This was his.
The fans were cool in his bedroom, but her skin was not. He could feel the pulse in her neck, the bones in her shoulders, the lines on her palms, the weight of her breasts, the warmth all over her. All his to catalogue by fingertips. Skin to skin. There was symmetry in that.
She closed her eyes and laced her fingers in his hair when they came together, but he kept his eyes open, watching her face, the strands of hair clinging to her blazing face. Perhaps he merely wanted to burn the vision into memory. Perhaps he wanted control still.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, the words beating with his heart, with his body's rhythm.
She exhaled his name, and he was lost.
II
"When I was ten, I tried to live in silence, like my mum," he told her, resting his head against her shoulder and his body against hers. "But there was always a noise that made me forget I shouldn't hear. A wind I would listen to and wonder how could push the clouds, a dog's bark in a language I couldn't speak, a fly buzzing in summer."
"And your mum?"
"She just smiled. She knew you can't let go of a sense by will."
"Yeah."
The air conditioning rattled and coughed before pushing heat back again, a wall of air against the blanket of heat.
"When I was five, I wished I couldn't see," Sara said, eyes closed. "If I couldn't see, I wouldn't know and it wouldn't really have happened. I tried to glue my eyelids shut. My mom told me I was silly. Then dad found out and they fought."
He didn't say anything because there was nothing to say that wouldn't sound trite, degrading or poor in the face of her words. He just took her hand and watched their fingers lace and somehow, it felt almost more intimate than anything else he'd done.
Pain, memories and skin in her hand, and he was taking it all.
"Why did we do this now?" she whispered, breath ragged in the heat. "What changed?"
"You."
"I changed?"
"You're stronger. I needed you to be stronger, to see in me something beyond your habit of falling for emotional unavailable men."
"Why?"
"Because I want it to last."
II
Monday: Her place, her invitation, her eyes like a fire and he a moth,
Tuesday: A dead child, a murdering parent, and Sara's tears never cried like pain in his skin that even her kisses cannot remove.
Wednesday: Dinner, his place. Sex, his bed. Dreams, dead butterflies and dead children.
Thursday: His car and silence, driving to another scene, her sleeping breath a habit and her tanning skin still warm.
Friday: His place, his invitation, his fumbled attempts at seduction with a new forensics paper she had been waiting for, and the paper falling to the floor forgotten,
Saturday: Never leaving home, like a beetle guarding a treasure.
Sunday: His place, no invitation, she coming anyway and he forgetting he hadn't asked her all the day till night.
This had to be love. He knew no other word for it.
II
"Grissom?"
"Yes?"
"Why do I still call you Grissom?"
"Because you always have? Habits are powerful."
"You'd know."
"Yes."
"Does it bug you?"
"No. My name doesn't define what I am to you."
"What does, then?"
"That I'm here."
II
In the morning, he had started to wake up just five minutes before the alarm clock, five minutes before her. It was enough time to get used to her being there, fight off the panic and shell of old Grissom and find control, or at least an illusion of.
In the morning, he had started to kiss her awake, kiss the remains of dreams from her lips because it was the only thing he could do. The night was memory's and past's, but the morning was summer and theirs.
In the morning, he has started to whisper what he hadn't dared in sun's full glare yet. Little words, no little meaning. Meaning that can trap him, give her power, give her a hold on him. And still he whispered them and she whispered them back.
In the morning, before the heat assaulted them, was the silence he'd never found as ten and never sought since, even feared. Just not absence of sound, but silence, the feel of it filling his mind. Silence was not no sounds. Silence was in spite of the sounds, in spite of summer's roar. Silence was life.
In the morning, Sara had started getting sick.
II
"I'm pregnant."
It was a shock wholly expected. He'd seen the signs, labelled them, numbered them, and still the words robbed his breath away.
"Grissom?"
"You're sure?" he asked, even as he knew he was.
"Yes. Doctor confirmed. What do you want to do?"
"I don't know."
She sat down on the stairs to his house, and he sat down next to her, watching the sun blaze down on them, but already losing intensity slowly and surely to the pass of seasons. Summer was never forever, even if one could live a lifetime in it.
"I could leave the lab," she offered.
"No. I'll talk to Ecklie, maybe Catherine or Warrick could be your supervisor."
"Or I could supervise myself."
"Maybe."
She nodded, the sun catching the shine in her hair, making her almost seem of light.
"Are you unhappy about this?"
"No. I'm..." He hesitated, one last second of another Grissom, another time.
"Scared?"
"Yes."
"So am I. Think we can be parents at all?"
"I don't know. We'll have to conduct an experiment."
She laughed and he laughed and he thought maybe, maybe this would be all right after all.
II
He cleared a bookshelf of entomology books and bought pregnancy books, childcare books, children's books, children's entomology books. As the shelf filled, he could feel something like panic grow too. He hadn't planned this. He couldn't control this. He could be like his father after all, and the child could be like him.
And he knew Sara would fear the same, that they would be her parents and the child would be her. At night, she had started to whisper of her fears, and he would nod and let her know they echoed in him without words.
'Courage is not in having no fears,' his mother had told him at fifteen and he hadn't understood. 'Courage is in having fears and still going on.'
He went on. More books, more talks with Ecklie, more doctor's appointments, more changes. Summer was ending and bugs were starting to die, having lived for what they was meant for, no more and no less.
He still envied them. But maybe, just maybe, he also pitied.
At fifty, Gil Grissom thought he understood.
Summer was ending and his life was not.