Author's Note: Good morning, folks. I'll start my note by thanking: ibreak4csi, Just.Let.Go x3 Nisha14, Lizzy Sidle, blatfink, and Atia of Julii. Your reviews, as they usually do, made my day. Okay, so this is still unbeta'd, and I'm not sure when the next update will be. I'm having trouble writing Chapter Four (there will be, most likely, five chapters to this) and updating/writing stories in general. I apologize. It will be here eventually. Thank you again from reading and reviewing, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Disclaimer (for both chapters): I would've used the song "I Touch Myself" by Divinyls in the last scene of "Way to Go" if I owned CSI.
Spoilers: A major one from "Way to Go" (6x24). I've warned you.
Chapter Three: Through Eyes and Emergencies and Evenings
As the last syllables leave his mouth, she looks at him and graces her mouth with a bittersweet smile. She raises her eyebrows slightly – her signature gesture, he thinks – stands upright, and walks to his side, leaning somewhat to have her face level with the side of his. He wishes for a moment that she would kiss him there, removing any and all blatant signs of Sara's lips and replacing them with the subtle traces of hers. He swallows as he hears her speak: "So, what happens now?"
"I suppose I'll have to break off whatever smidgen of a sexual relationship I have with her before Conrad finds out and nails my ass to his desk like a trophy."
"And as funny as the irony of an ass nailing an ass to his desk and the visual of that might be," she says, words laced with laughter, "it's pretty obvious that we don't want Conrad to fire – or nail, I should say – your ass, whether it is figurative or literal."
"Obviously the man doesn't know about the seven deadly sins. Pride happens to be on that list. Along with," he swallows and continues, reluctant to say the words, "lust."
"Gil, this is probably one of the dumbest things you've ever done, but you're only human. And," she states as she places a hand on his arm, "I won't, unlike you, berate you endlessly for having a relationship that could interfere with your professional judgment, let alone compromise your job as a whole."
"Thanks for the pleasant reminder," he says sarcastically. "I appreciate your empathy."
"Only the best for you," she says, "in your time of need." Catherine stands, rubs him arm, and walks towards the door. "And by the way, if you need rescuing, don't hesitate to throw up a flare or set your Big Mouth Billy Bass on fire," she states before smiling once more and leaving the room.
"Hey," he calls to her just as she closes the door, "you got a match?" And he sees hears her laughter as she walks down the hallway.
"Grissom!" calls a voice behind him as he reaches for the jacket hanging in the back of his locker. He drops it, mutters a curse under breath, and grasps the coat before turning to see Sara. Closing his locker before leaning against it, he has the leather jacket lying over his arm, the muscles tight with anxiety and shaking. He hopes she doesn't notice as he smiles, reservedly, at her. She walks toward him, a spring in her step, and proceeds to embrace him while he only manages to place his free arm around her back and pat her lightly on her shoulder blade. "Hi Sara," comes his voice with nervous undertones and a quaking tinge to it. He feels very awkward like this, hugging her, and releases from her hold just as she goes to fondle the back edge of his slacks. She seems slightly taken aback but allows him to move away and slide into his jacket.
"So," she begins, with him shivering slightly at how light and pure her voice sounds compared to that scream he heard from her just days ago, "are you free tonight?"
In his mind, he sees her sitting on the side of a white bath, stroking the water gently with a hand with dirty, short nails but smooth, white skin. Grissom sees the arm of her clothing and recognizes it as the robe she wore before, but the sleeves' edges are frayed, matching perfectly with the scars and scratches she has on her arm. His eyes continue scanning her body, seeing her long brown hair in a ponytail, her legs long but covered with scrapes and scabs, her narrow figure narrower and less developed, her feet clad in skin and dirt and nothing more. He sees all of this as she sees him and stands, stripping from the robe, which he notices is stained and looser on her, before it falls lifelessly to the floor. He removes his eyes from her body, staring at the floor made of light pink carpeting and covered with dried daisy petals, and as he sees another petal fall to the ground, he looks toward the ceiling and sees hundreds of flowers hanging by their stems, becoming browner by the second while more instantly appear for no apparent reason. He watches them blossom and die, appear and leave, grow and fade, before his concentration is broken by the feel of two hands against his chest, feeling his breathing, counting his heartbeat, and fingering his shirt to its tempo. He avoids her eyes, instead absorbing her anatomy, the ever so slight curve of her tiny breasts, the petite shoulders, the young neck muscled gently. She slips her hands off his body and places them atop of his, her tender flesh against his grainy skin, and she moves his hands upward until they rest on her chest. He swallows and tries to move away, but she surprises him by grabbing his wrists and forcing his hands to stay. The water is now spilling over the rim of the tub, falling to the floor and coming nearer to them, to him, and he feels it frigidity as it laps at his ankles, then his knees, his hips, his neck, all of the time while standing there with Sara forcing his hands to remain where she wants them to be. He feels the water rest below his lower lip, and he...
He ends the thought and breathes deeply through his mouth as he feels Sara's eyes on him, waiting for a response. "Uh, no, no, I'm not. But I'm not feeling too well. I was planning on just going home and settling in for the night."
"Well, I'll come home with you and, you know, keep you warm until you're feeling better. I've read that human contact is medicinal, although Ecklie may be an exception to that rule," she tells him as moves forward and places her hand on his check, letting his beard prick the tender skin on her palm and fingers. He gazes at her hand and notices the stubby nails and pink and healthy flesh, and he groans inwardly. He succumbed to her desire – was it because of the eyes, the anatomy, or everything together? he wonders – and is now having to live a life between lies. He doesn't love her romantically; he loves her paternally. He would just like to hold her hand and stroke her checks rather than pin her against a wall and caress her thighs. He just really wants to finger her hair and kiss her, lightly, friendlily, on the cheek instead of pulling her hair back to savagely nip at her neck like a hungrily lusting vampire. He doesn't want his actions to be harsh and hurtful; he wishes for them to be loving and healing.
He places his hand on hers, tender flesh against grainy skin in reality instead of a symbolic fantasy gone awry, and his eyes are wide – with fear? with tears? – while his face is narrow. He looks emaciated, that he knows, and he wonders for what he is so hungry.
"Sara, I would really just like to go home and be by myself for a while. I'm still adjusting to…this new arrangement," he says in a coarse voice, and as he removes her fingers from his face and tries to walk around her, she turns, stops, and places her hands on his chest. The bench in the middle of the already-narrow aisle presses into the back of his legs, and he feels his balance lessening.
"Gil," she begins, moving her mouth towards his ear, whispering, "please don't do this. Damnit, you could commit to this job for twenty years, but you can't even be involved with me for a week? This is all yours, Grissom, all of it." She slides her hands off his chest and places them on his, and proceeds to lift them to touch the slight curve of her waist. She wants – no, needs – him to feel it, feel her, feel the beauty, the energy, every patch of white skin under clothing's cover that he has already seen and that she wants him to see again. All of the curves sloping gently, dipping lightly, and creating room enough for his hands and the rest of him, too, because just as she needs him, she knows that he needs her as well. This is not a forced relationship, she thinks. It happened naturally, just like the blossoming of a breathtaking flower, with the wind planting the seed, with the rain of sexual tension unspoken but not unnoticed nourishing it, and with it finally growing into what it is now.
A flower like the one he had on his shirt that night, with the blue fabric and white plastic buttons she undid slowly, carefully, before pulling at the lapel to reveal broad, tan shoulders and a chest probably never seen by the eyes of any romantic lover before her – if there were any before her. She remembers running her hands down his sides and how he shivered so with an arousal foreign to his mind. She knows how he feels, because she knows, is certain, that when two people love one another they feel the same about their love. She understands that they love with a love that is more than love and will do it forevermore. She is certain that she will love him until death do them part without a wedding because she is aware that a wedding is only a way to keep those in false love together and to allow them to mate and procreate and live in the misery and tedium of religion and tradition.
She removes her lips from their proximity to his ear, and she stares at him, at his eyes. His hands are still on her waist, hers still on top of them, and she moves them so that they now rest on her hips. "Gil," she begins, her entire body against the lockers, "show me that you can show your love for me, because I know I'm not the only one feeling things here."
Grissom looks her pleadingly, and his hands twitch; he truly wants to move them off her and just run. Somewhere, anywhere but here, in this position, with her and with the chances of being seen astronomical.
Before he loses his balance, he manages to pull his hands away from her body and move around her quickly. She tries to grab his wrist once more, but he is just out-of-reach as he sits on the bench and rubs his legs through his trousers where it pressed into the muscles. He lifts his right pant leg to reveal an angry red mark on the calf.
Sara sits next to him and murmurs roughly, "Gil, what the hell are you doing?"
He gazes at her, his face indifferent, and speaks poetically: "How can I show you my love if it is trapped in a home by the neon sea with my darling, my love, my Catherine Marie, who is coming to save me from thee?"
And he stands from the bench and walks, retrieving his cell phone from his pocket as he leaves Sara, mouth gaping and eyes raging, alone in the locker room.