Sue: "Holding a fic hostage for reviews is off-putting and generally thought of as bad form enough to actually quit reading."

Duly noted. Consider me properly chastised. Last night for desert I had the biggest slice of humble-pie I could find, and realized that I've been acting like a pig, whining about lack of reviews. To the readers, I apologize for my bad behavior, and for acting childishly. Begging for reviews is never good etiquette, and is particularly unflattering when done repeatedly. Mea culpa, it won't happen again.

And as for my non-existent recognition of all of the ways that Grissom and Catherine would make an excellent couple? I noticed, but sort of shoved it to the back of my consciousness or wrote it off as friendship, being the hard-headed GSR shipper that I was… although now that I've seen the light, it's painfully obvious that they're good for each other. I had something like that in my first draft of my author's notes, but took it out because I decided to slim it down.

Thank you so much for the encouragement, and for the reality check. Sometimes my swollen balloon of a head needs to be popped so I can be brought back down to earth. This chapter is dedicated to you, and to the other readers, for putting up with me, even when I was being a butt.

Each time they passed each other in the hallway after that, they avoided eye-contact. They barely spoke a word to each other, and Grissom personally made certain that they could have as little interaction as possible: he assigned her to work with Warrick, with Nick, Sara, anyone but him. He couldn't… couldn't bear to see the pain in her eyes.

Her pain had become his own, he supposed. Like a virus, it had spread from its host, infecting and eventually taking over a new body while still leaving the last one just as desiccated as before. There was this constantly throbbing ache in his chest that hadn't been there before. What was almost worse was the sharp stab that he felt every so often, so intense that it made him gasp for air. These always seemed to come when he caught a whiff of her perfume in the air of the Trace lab, or saw the swish of her blonde hair out of the corner of his eye as she rounded a turn, or some other fleeting glimpse of her. He had always known that loss hurt emotionally… but he had never known that it could do so physically, also.

He was in the break room, reading through reports, approving some while disapproving others. She was sitting on the other side of the table, munching an apple and flipping through some magazine. For the first few moments they were hyper-aware of one another and had to struggle to appear unfazed, but after awhile his attention started to wander as he was caught up in what he was doing. Absently he reached out for the pen that he knew was in the middle of the table…

And his fingers brushed hers. She pulled back as if she had been burned, cradling her hand against her chest protectively. They stared at one another for a moment, not knowing what to say. After a moment, Grissom started to speak.

"Catherine -"

"Don't." She wore a warning look, one that said, 'Gil Grissom, you leave me alone.' "Just… don't." She stood and left the room. And he just watched her walk away. Again.

Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and they still couldn't sit in the same room without falling into an incredibly awkward silence and couldn't look at each other without glancing away uncomfortably after a moment. After awhile the edge started to fade however, and each fell into a kind of numbness. They weren't comfortable around each other, and interacted as little as possible, but they co-existed efficiently enough to keep up appearances and get the job done. People stopped dancing around them as if they were going to explode at any moment, and they fell into the rhythm of daily life once more.

He saw her, walking down the hallway. She shivered lightly, wrapped her arms around her body, whether to shield herself from the cold or from something else entirely, he wasn't quite sure. So this was what it was like, then, to be on the outside looking in. To want, and desperately desire, but to be unable to do anything at all. It was lonely, on the outside.

He watched her smile at Nick, throw a casually flirtatious glance at Greg, and sashay past Sara with a smirk. He observed her facade, the game that she played, the confident mask that she wore which hid her deep pains and insecurities. She slipped effortlessly into her part, an actress who had forgotten that she was acting, until she was alone. He saw her shoulders droop, then, saw her head dip downwards and her features loosen in... what? Loneliness? Despair? Hopelessness? He could no more easily dececipher the meanings in those deep blue eyes than before; she remained just as much a mystery to him. It had seemed for a time that she would have shed her secrets and fought her demons, shared the true Catherine Willows with him. Now, it seemed, she never would.