New, improved angst! Now, with longer chapters! Thanks got to Lauren who helped me not chuck this entire chapter (she's just great like that), Laura Katharine who helped me to work out the kinks with the food and for the incredibly late nate ramblings, and Cheesefires, the most patient and insane little bunny-beta plushie in the wooooorld.

The drive back to her apartment was short and uncomfortable. Even though she was alone, he was lingering around inside of her mind, his easy smiles shaking her supposedly calm facade. One day gone, thirteen more and she was already at her wits end, quite ready to tear her hair out by the root.

In her head, she was setting up a soundtrack to the random recent happenings between them. In her head, aloof, female singers sang, spilled lyrics of eventual heart mending. A roll of her eyes turned down the volume, realizing that no, not everything would be perfect. Life didn't always turn out the way you want it to and sometimes the song you have on repeat is simply unbearable and completely untrue.

She knew the way to his house well, as if she'd driven there many times when in reality she'd been there only once.

With raw nerves she pulled into a parking space on the street, feeling that the brief jaunt from the car to the house would give her time to calm her nerves.

It didn't, big surprise.

A few quick raps on his door and he appeared before her, neither smiling nor frowning, his face neutral and she was happy for it. She wasn't quite sure she could face a smiling, confident Grissom. He stepped aside and allowed her entry and she stepped forward, head down, heat licking her cheeks. For some reason she was embarrassed, uneasy, wanting to bolt from his space.

But she didn't and instead stepped daintily into the living area, clasping her hands in front of herself, waiting.

Grissom stood in front of her, his hands are in his pockets, gently rocking on his heels. "So, I made... not made, threw together... do you like spinach?"

Sara raised a single brow and nodded slowly. "Yes..."

"There are tri-color tortilla chips," Grissom said with excitement, pointing to the bowl filled with them on the table. "And the spinach-artichoke dip is in the fridge if you want to get it out..." She smiled once her back was to him; Grissom, getting so excited at the prospect of multi-colored snacks and Grissom, making her dinner.

Again, a few days ago and she would have been over the moon to have him cooking for her. Now, she was just... over.

With little finesse, she pulled a large green bowl from the depths of the refrigerator. Setting it on the table, she shucked the protective plastic wrap that adorned the top, grabbed a chip and stuck it in. She pulled it out, inspecting the mixture for a moment before popping it into her mouth.

Only a second went by before her eyes twitched; oh, that was good. That earned him points. Thank goodness his back was turned because she snatched up another chip rather quickly, smearing it liberally with dip and shoving it into her mouth.

"How is it?" he called over his shoulder as he began to dice a tomato.

She blinked, once, twice and stopped herself from diving into the bowl. "It's okay, I guess."

Grissom shot her a glance over his shoulder. "Okay!" she admitted, "I'm not going to lie. It's really, really good." And with that she plopped down into a chair, sulking a bit, but still dipping into the bowl like it was some sort of ambrosia to her. Yeah, this whole cooking bit definitely earned him points, but she wouldn't let him know that.

Sara sat at the table and casually crunched what she had deemed the 'appetizer' while Grissom went about the short process of setting up what looked like a pizza. She caught glances of him out of the corner of her eye, spreading tomatoes on the dough instead of sauce, adding broccoli and mozzarella to the top.

Finally, nearly twenty chips later, he was finished with his project and shoved it into the oven. Seating himself across from her, he grabbed a chip himself and she watched him crunch and chew away, wondering what else his jaw was good for.

Bad, bad thoughts. She shook them from her head, taking a virgin tortilla, mashing it between her teeth. "You cook," she pointed out.

Grissom shrugged a little, gathering some of his mixture onto a chip. "When I have someone to cook for." Sara nodded, placing herself adequately in the seat of 'the person he was cooking for' by eating more of his food. "We're going to talk..." he stated, and she nodded, chewing quietly.

"Oh! Now?" Sara asked humorously, her voice clearly sarcastic.

He crossed his legs and sat back in the chair, sighing. "After the…" he twiddled his fingers in the direction of the oven.

"The pizza."

"So we kill twenty minutes... eating chips and staring at each other."

"You've become jaded over the years," he summed up.

"Yeah." she huffed, "Big surprise.

Grissom nodded, his lips twitching. "Want a beer? I've got... Corona and... some Pabst." Sara laughed at that, swallowing her mouthful of food.

"I can't believe you drink that stuff, it's so, so..." She searched for an adequate description.

Grissom's eyebrow raised in anticipation as did a side of his lips. "So..." he pressed.

"So, 'Excuse me sir, but I was wondering can you please go in there and buy me a rack of the cheapest stuff?'" Sara paused in her mocking. "'I'll give you extra for whatever you want...'"

Grissom laughed. "So that's what you did in high school?"

Her mouth found itself smiling, as did her eyes; her heart just cracked a little more. These were the moments she had longer for, the simple, beautiful moments when they could be people instead of coworkers, friends instead of strangers. "Me? Oh no. But I know enough."

He grabbed two bottles of the Blue Ribbon and brought them to the table, popping the caps on the edge. The jagged edge of the cap cut into the table, little lightening bolts licking the edge. She wondered if he'd look back on them down the road and remember that they had been made with her. He'd made something with her... but not really. She took the beer when he offered it and paid attention when he began to speak.

"And... it just reminds me of home." Holding the bottle up in front of his face, "This is what I drank in college."

That shocked her. "You drank in college?"

His face blanched for a moment before he laughed at her. "I went to parties, yeah. I just... studied more." And as he finished his explanation, he grabbed another chip. "You didn't?"

"In college, yeah." Sara said, leaning back, nursing her beer like a pro. "I remember lots of U2 and funnels and... I swear one time I was doing formulas on the back of a napkin for a bet... that can't have gone well..."

Grissom really laughed at that and for a moment she got the distinct feeling that she was just shooting the shit with a friend. Oh god, she had to keep reminding herself that she wasn't. "So you broke away in college?" Grissom asked.

Nodding, she took a pull on her beer. "Had to, I had to get out, do things. Get my head out of the books, you know."

"I think your head would have been fine just in the books too." He said it as a compliment and surprisingly she took it as such.

A sweet look passed over her eyes. "And then I never would have met you, the idea to go to the first seminar was a random thing. I just... went. It was part of my plan, the 'get up and go' thing."

He considered that for a moment. "You know, I'm rather happy that you learned to fly free," he said in jest, going back on his earlier comment. Sara laughed loud and thoroughly at his comment and he smiled at the sound of it.

And for a bit, they sat contentedly at the table, listening to the clock tick off the seconds, each finding their own significance for the amber color of the beer. They each fell into their own solitude, neither really wanting to acknowledge the fact that they were wrapped in each other.

When Grissom finally lifted his eyes and caught hers, a deeper gaze than they'd ever shared, hurt and longing swirling in the depths of the blue... the timer buzzed. They looked away, Grissom smiling shyly, shaking his head for the words that got lost in all the nothing. Sara shook her head and said, "You knew I'd walk away one day."

"Yeah," was all he said as he got up and adorned oven mitts.

He pulled the bubbling pizza from the oven and set it on top of the stove. Although Sara's stomach growled, she still put on the ruse that she wasn't hungry. Cutting the pie easily into eight sections, he shoveled two pieces onto each of the two plates and handed one to her. "Really, this is a diamond in the rough," his eyes held some sort of vague meaning that she chose not to process. "Easy, quick, but very, very tasty."

Sara nearly fizzled over when he said tasty, the way his tongue licked his lips...

Instead she accepted her plate and set it down before her, watching as he sat as well. The silence had to be broken, it had to. Sara pushed the pieces around on her plate. It was nice to finally just sit down with him as a normal human being, but at the same time she was pissed. "This is overcooked."

"Some people would consider that rude."

Sara blinked and took another bite into her mouth. "Some people would care if they were being rude to other people. I'm not one of those people right now." Okay, the pizza was good, amazing... but it wasn't like he had grown the damned tomatoes and personally tossed the crust.

They chewed in silence. After each of them had successfully eaten one slice of pizza, Sara started up the conversation. "So, we should begin our talk..."

Grissom, blinked, licked his lips and nodded. "I suppose-"

"Yeah, you should begin, this was your idea." He was trying and while she respected that, she also felt the need to press him a bit further. She had to show him that this wasn't a game, but that was for later. The present was for listening to what he had to say, showing him that she was receptive to whatever he spoke.

"Where do I begin?" He'd asked it rhetorically, used it as a stalling technique but she called him on it.

"From the beginning," she demanded, crossing her legs, as if for some sort of emphasis. For a moment he dug into his pizza, finishing the entire slice. He was composing his thoughts and she looked away to give him a tiny semblance of privacy while he reorganized what he wanted to say.

"I don't, what do..." He steepled his fingers in front of his nose and his head fell. "I don't know if I can do this," the wrinkles came out full force on his forehead. He looked tired, worn, sad, old, one moment away from a migraine.

Sara pursed her lips and nodded. "Okay, but I don't get it." He picked up his head to look at her; she wasn't upset, just impatient; she was looking at him as if he needed to do it, needed to do it all right then or she walked away. He didn't know if he could handle that. "You can have all of these psycho-analytical discussions about other people, you feel fine picking apart other people's brains." She allowed herself a sarcastic smile. "You want to know about other people... but no one can know about you. That's not fair, that's not right."

Again, silence blanketed the room.

He blinked a few times and sighed. "The very beginning, from Berkeley?"

Sara nodded slowly. "Why did you agree to give that seminar in the first place?"

"I heard about promising new students in forensics." Grissom stated, eyes fading to that place where reminiscing holds one's consciousness captive. "You weren't one of them," he added quickly and then amended, "I mean, weren't one of the reasons... you know what I mean. You weren't one of the people who was expected to... be at the seminar, I had a list of names, you weren't on it..."

"No?" she asked, nearly seductively, but only nearly. He was babbling, if she hadn't been intent on getting to the resolution of the train wreck that had become 'them', she would have smiled.

"No, but as it turned out, not many of them showed much promise at much of anything and... how long had I known you, maybe seventy-two full hours before I gave you that call?"

"Which?"

Grissom smiled easily. "When I asked you if you wanted to attend the second lecture on, god what was it-"

"Beetles, timelines, something like that," she supplied, settling back, nibbling on the crust of her pizza. Damn good crust too.

A lick of his lips and a tiny smile and he was remembering. "And to their credit your classmates had questions, a lot of them," He gave a tilt of his head. "But then again how many of them are here with me now..." he mumbled and she blushed, really and truly.

As much as she hated to admit it, it meant something to be there sitting with him. She was sure that some of her classmates, people who'd thought they were better than her, would be amazed that she was sitting with him. They'd be amazed that she was sitting with the genius, with the amazing professor... with the alluringly handsome man.

They'd be amazed that she was taken with him. They'd be amazed and stunned, they'd be speechless that he was truly taken with her as well.

And as if reading her thoughts, "There were these," he brought his hand back and forth through the air as if brushing something off, "Silly girls, you know, showing up at my temporary office, crossing their legs and batting their eyelashes, asking me to dinner or coffee… and more. It was rather flattering." He laughed. "It's funny now, I didn't know that women like that were allowed into schools like that..." He blinked. "That's a joke, I was trying to be funny."

Sara just shrugged and nibbled on the stump of her crust. "They all had crushes." It was true, a number of her classmates had become easily enamored by the guest lecturer. There had even been a pool set up to see which of the women would be the first to get into his pants (as if there would be a second and third)-none of them ever did of course. Sara laughingly wondered if any of her peers would have had the stamina she had, waiting so long while receiving so little.

"And then, that's where you come in-after the first lecture-this girl came up to me and you were pretty but I had to think of you as just a student because well... and asked me incredibly in-depth questions which I had to analyze, that I had to scrutinize." A smile crept upon his lips. "And then we went for bad coffee and the last of the office hours and more coffee and..."

Grissom stopped, turned his head away. "And then what?" Her voice was bland, her eyes bored looking out into the living room.

"And then I wanted to kiss you, I wanted to... wanted to know you." His voice was finite, sound and true and she snapped her eyes to his immediately, wanting to validate the statement. Grissom's eyes were remarkably blue and open and she swallowed; she'd never thought this catharsis possible for him. He was really trying. "Then... I didn't know I was allowed to. I didn't want to think that I could touch you... I had someone back in Minnesota who was about to leave and there you were... something close to stunning. And even though I was cautious that you might have been putting on a veneer, there was nothing I wanted more than to kiss you. But I didn't and we continued on about physics and bugs on that last night and..."He paused, a sigh coloring the silence around them. "I can't really remember what else because to tell you the truth Sara, I was trying to sum up your exact height and kept getting distracted by your legs."

Again, she blinked.

"You have," his voice was sad, distant as he spoke. "The most amazingly long legs I've ever seen, and I couldn't think about beetles then."

Sara allowed her eyes to slip closed; he stole a glance at her. She was older, more wrinkled; she was jaded, just like he was. But she was beautiful and wonderfully intelligent and she'd never, never in the past had ever judged him. She was his perfection, that singular person on the planet that could really complete him. And to think, to think he'd nearly just given her away.

"And for some reason, your eyes caught me off guard..." Grissom tilted his head to glance at her. "Brown, I swear then that after I saw your eyes, the blues and the greens made sense because I knew brown. I knew it. Because I knew what brown was... the other colors fell into place."

A rare, toothy smile broke across his face. "I think I had an inkling then. Maybe that's why I gave you my card, because I knew that, that... that forever." He shrugged, maintaining some semblance of aloofness. "Maybe it was just because you were brilliant."

His fingers picked at each other as he thought about it.

Sara tossed her crust down onto the plate. "Maybe." Her voice was hard and sad.

His eyes snapped up and took in the slopes of her face. "You're beautiful," he said urgently, causing her eyes to connect with his. "And you're brilliant." His tongue came out to lick against his bottom lip, adding a perfect cadence to his admission. "And you're... perfect in every way to me," he said quickly, severing their visual connection. "That doesn't mean I can have you."

"What?"

"That doesn't mean I'm allowed to have you." He shook his head. "I'll never give you enough of what you need, I can't return all of these... all of this... these feelings I feel for you to completion." He paused, realizing how obscure he was being. "Do you understand?"

Not a second went by before she replied. "Then why have me here, why give me two weeks."

"Because I need you to convince me." he shot back, eyes finally blazing, blazing with passion. "I need you to, I need...

I hate to be... I can't be like this." He finally stated, passion flickering out, head falling into his hands.

Sara felt momentary victory before compassion overtook her and she brought a hand near his head as if to caress him. But his head shot up. "You have to make me understand this."

"What?"

Grissom shook his head, thinking that she didn't understand when really she just needed him to explain further.

"Griss, please..."

"Start here," he said, nearly begged, "Show me how to love you."

Sara sat back and simply took it all in. Show him how to love her? She didn't know if she could; she didn't know if she could even understand.

"I guess it's time for me to leave," she said suddenly.

His head snapped up, a million thoughts shooting through his head. "No!"

"I meant leave your place, Griss, not... not Vegas."

"Oh..."

Sara's voice dipped to a whisper. "But thank you for... being honest with me." She got up from her chair, grabbing their plates, bringing them to the sink. "And now we have something to build on."

Grissom walked her to the door, palm wanting to rest on her lower back, but holding off. "Just think," Sara said, body half-in, half-out of his home. "You just got past the hard part, next time it's my turn."

And as she disappeared down his front steps, Grissom called out, "Twelve days?"

"Twelve!" she answered and as he shut the door, he swore he could hear the hint of a smile in her voice.