I feel so bad, Marlou's beta-ing the story I'm writing for her. Boo me. Boo me big time. Lauren is anal and makes me happy.
Melancholy was her friend for the rest of the morning, carrying directly into the cooling of the sun, leading into the evening with little pressure. It was there, lingering around her eyes, making itself her friend. Every few moments she'd roll her eyes, once again pissed at herself for changing her mind.
His powers of persuasion were breathtaking. So were his eyes.
She hadn't bothered to unpack; she had a feeling that if she did, she would simply have to pack again. So a wrinkled shirt and a faded pair of jeans were pulled deep from within a box, strewing clothes about her with the force she used to pull them out. Upheaval, how ironic. She rolled her eyes... again.
The clothes went onto her body, cotton clinging to her skin and she smiled, yet burst into tears. Everything stung; she should have been gone. She should have been on the other side of the country... New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Augusta for Christ's sake. She should have been gone.
But she wasn't.
Because he had asked her to stay. Sickening... but not really. And the fact that she wasn't sickened did sicken her. She'd never been so confused and she hated it.
Shift went as always and she turned her eyes to cold and dark when he glanced at her. He didn't want instant gratification, he knew he would have to work to make her stay. To make her stay with him. He knew he had to show her this time and he tried to tell her with his eyes(,) but she wouldn't receive the message he was so desperate to communicate.
Sara made a trip to the supermarket that day, her food having been tossed that morning. She thought for a moment about asking him to reimburse her for at least the strawberries she'd trashed but had ended up leaving headquarters before speaking to him again. She didn't want to talk to him.
She did want to talk to him.
They had to talk.
There were moments in her day during which she felt empowered, feeling like she finally had the upper hand, the pull in negotiations and this heady feeling rushing through her veins. But if she was in control, she would have been gone already... and then she'd pull back, reexamine the situation and proceed to sulk for a few moments and become pissed off again.
A red basket in her hand, she weaved her way through the aisles. One container of tofu, a carton of milk, some lettuce, bread, and finally she began picking out peaches. She could at least indulge herself over those last days (god damn, they would be her last days) in Vegas.
Tossing one final softly-orange orb into her back, she sauntered off, peeling around the corner into the aisle for instant coffee. Coffee, caffeine, old friend...
And he was there; of course he was there. He was there because fate was a twisted motherfucker who wanted her completely on the edge of sanity before she learned her lesson. Her face immediately fell, staring at the side of his face as he casually tossed a can of Folgers into his cart.
She wanted to touch his beard; she wanted to jump off a bridge.
And she knew he would see her, knew he would, so she just stood there and waited. Eventually, he turned his head, surely feeling the rays from her eyes touch upon him.
And when he turned, the left side of his face flicked up in a half-smile, both pleased and startled to see her. She didn't smile, just stood. It was then that he glanced down at her basket; he regarded the contents slowly and then walked up to her, stood there for a long moment and took the basket from her hands.
He said nothing. She said nothing.
They stared at each other and then he walked the few feet to his cart and placed her basket down in the child seat.
"Hell on your wrists," he reasoned and began pushing the cart, intending for her to follow. But she didn't, and for some reason, some perverse, twisted reason within him, it made him smile. Grissom paused at the end of the aisle and glanced back at her. "Walk with me; we'll start our talk here, neutral ground."
After a few moments of careful deliberation, she strolled after him, watching as he trailed around the corner. "I would have figured you for a basket man," Sara called, her voice so dry that it was parched.
Grissom shot her a quick glance over his shoulder as he threw a bag of baked potato chips into a carriage. "Used to be, but then again, I don't get out to the store much." He tossed a box of Cheez-Its in. "This is supposed to last me a month... at least." He pointed down at a bottle of pickles, and she nearly laughed.
Sara nodded, remembering that time when her stomach would have fluttered to be doing this mundane thing with him.
Vaguely, she wished for that leisure back, wished for those tiny little flutterbys, wished for a time where she could pine after him in ignorance. Damn... she felt like a moron, one who kept coming back and back and back. "You like peaches?" he asked, snapping her to the present, effectively steering her clear of walking into a granola bar display.
"I guess."
"You guess? You bought seven of them!"
"You're an investigator, what does that lead you to believe," she asked harshly.
Grissom blinked and touched the bag quickly. "Just trying to get to know you."
"You had five years to do THAT."
The flick of his index finger back in her direction, caught her attention. "True." It was said as if he actually understood what five years was, what a long time it was to wait for someone with nearly nothing in return. Maybe he saw her for what she was, finally emotionally emaciated because of him, existing from the scant breadcrumbs he tended to toss behind.
Sara blinked and waited for him to speak. "For us to talk about this, we need footing, to be on the same page," he mentioned, scanning the contents of a bottle of Diet Lime Coca Cola. "We have to find somewhere to begin, before this was... this." His gaze was drawn to her again, but as soon as she caught it, he drew his attention back to the ingredients of the diet soda. He cringed.
Sara looked down to her shoe, unsure. This was intensely... insane. "You don't find it odd that we're talking about this in a supermarket?" A chill ran up her spine at the glance he graced her with; they must have been close to frozen foods.
"On the contrary, I thought bonus points would be awarded for meeting with you in public." His tone was flippant, ordinary even and Sara wondered if her world had tilted on its axis.
Sara scoffed at him, grabbed a bottle of orange soda and tossed it in his cart. It bounced over his squash with a dull thwack. "We didn't plan this, and you're a prick." It was supposed to come out light, but her voice took on a thickness she couldn't explain.
"I can accept that," he reasoned, placing the liter of cola back on the shelf, and brushing off her tone. "If you can admit to being increasingly difficult..."
"I've never denied that. I see that as a strong suit." Sara said vehemently, crossing her hands over her chest as a whiny little child would. She didn't care, she couldn't care. She was just past the point of caring.
Or... maybe not. Her hands fell to her sides. Damn it all.
"I do too." He said, paused and swung around to smile at her. "And look at that, we're on the same page." This was not Gil Grissom, this was some clone, a pseudo-man who was fucking with her head. It had to be; he couldn't be reaching out to her now, not after all the things she'd said to him the previous night.
She snatched her bag of peaches from his cart. She didn't know why, but it was the only thing she could think of to do.
"After this, we couldn't ever really be happy, could we?" she asked, swinging her bag of peaches alongside her, in between the both of them.
After placing a box of pasta carefully on top of the volatile-looking orange soda, he turned to her slowly. "Pessimism?
"No more thinking like that, we have thirteen more days to lay all of this out." Thirteen...
God, he wanted to snub her chin, just touch it with his thumb and forefinger, but he didn't. He held back and glanced at the contents of his cart thus far. "Thirteen's an unlucky number," she mumbled; at least it was a somewhat-truth.
"Superstitious?" he asked, his glasses sliding down over his nose and he glanced from the can of tomato paste to her. Adorable, that's how he looked and she felt a lump rise to her throat; maybe there really was no cure for love.
Maybe there was no getting out of it.
A shrug was her initial answer. "Never too late to start," she reasoned, taking the can from his hand, tossing it into the carriage with disinterest. A new mantra in that, and she promised to repeat it to herself over the days ahead, 'never too late to start.' Sara thought for a moment. 'Or end', she mused.
Grissom chuckled, almost allowing the delicate tension between them to dissipate. "So," he began slowly, "What am I cooking for you this morning?" His voice was casual, smooth and it almost allowed her to smile and miss the actual purpose of the question itself.
Sara's body immediately stiffened, and the obscure lethargy she'd felt moments before dissipated rather quickly.
"Excuse me?"
The smile that slid up onto his face was distinctly salacious; it made her uncomfortable, it made her excited... it made her confused. This was the exact thing she didn't want happening. Damn it.
"Well, I thought maybe I could make you dinner and we could talk," and he said it like it was the most run of the mill thing to say. "I can cook," he promised.
"No," she said, almost stomping her feet on the floor. That made her feel good, denying him.
Grissom looked amused when he turned to her. "We're not getting take out..."
Sara set her jaw and tilted her head. "I'm not coming over."
He blinked, shrugged, and held out her basket for her to take. "Okay." And with that, he walked off, rounding another corner without her.
Sara stood and fumed for a few moments. He was infuriating, totally and completely an asshole... through and through, so to alleviate some of the pressure building between her eyes, she walked up to the line of registers and got in one, waiting for her turn to pay. She felt a little better now that she had been able to walk away from such an invitation from him.
The early morning sun screeched at her when she left the cool confines of the supermarket. Brushing it off, she pushed her sunglasses over her eyes and made quick work of locating her car keys.
Sara was about to climb into the stuffy interior of her car when she heard him call out behind her. "Come on, please? I bought avocados. I don't even like avocados."
She blinked and licked her lips, not completely sold. "It has no cholesterol, and I'm trying to get my cholesterol... who knows, maybe I can learn to love them."
Step one, he was willing to eat avocados for her; she supposed she should be there to bear witness.