Flirting with Sara is different than any other flirting he has ever done. In the past, with other women, it was always a conscious choice. Delicately designed flattery.
With Sara, he does not even realize he is flirting until she is blushing. Until she is smiling at him, biting her lip, raising her eyebrows. Until she is parrying back, her voice warm and playful.
He is just talking to her, making observations about the world that most people squint at in confusion or pondering aloud a puzzle piece that she instinctively solves. In the past, flirting was work. With Sara, it is as natural as breathing.
Still, there are times he does it intentionally.
There is a game they play. It started at that second conference, back in Venice Beach, when she made the joke about the couple in the dark corner of the bar and conference hookups. They make observations about other people, other couples. About sex. It is a way to flirt without flirting. To push the boundaries while still appearing to be professional. They both know they are doing it, but they never discuss it.
She initiates this game more often than he does, but when he does it, her cheeks turn pink and her eyes avert, and she is the most beautiful he ever sees her. He is always looking for opportunities to catch her off guard.
Today they are in an airplane together. The rest of the team is in the airport, interviewing and processing the first class passengers, all of whom witnessed a violent death forty thousand feet in the air.
They are recreating the victim's last moments, and currently he is wounded and heading to the lavatory.
He surveys the tiny bathroom once he arrives, seeing nothing with the naked eye. She hands him a uv light and then his Christopher Columbus, and he examines the DNA deposit he finds on the rim of the toilet seat. As soon as he puts his eye to the microscope, a slow grin begins to spread across his face.
"I take it that's not blood," she says.
"No, but it has protein…." he replies, waiting for her to make the connection.
It doesn't take long. A flash of a grin, and then she nods, her eyes darting away from him momentarily. "Oh. The mile high club," she says, looking back to him with a smirk.
After a pause, he turns back to the microscope, and she continues theorizing. "You know, that means two passengers may have had no idea what was going on inside that cabin."
He is not ready to be finished with their flirting. It is his turn to surprise her. To make her blush. To remind her that they may just be friends, colleagues, but he is also a sexual being. That she once wanted him. Might still.
"You know, high altitude increases the entire sexual experience," he says, forcing his voice to stay casuaI. "It increases the euphoria."
"Well, it's good," she says, her voice equally blase, a little skeptical. "I don't know if it's that good."
His stomach drops. His pulse skyrockets. This was not the response he expected. As always, she surprises him.
He looks up at her slowly, schooling his face.
"Cite your source," she says with a little smile. Another of their favorite games.
"Hand me a swab, please," he says disapprovingly, ignoring her request. He has no source to give. He has no idea where he first read that assertion. Some waiting room magazine cover maybe. Men's Health. Maxim. Cosmo.
She knows she has flustered him. She loves flustering him. She is never happier than when she can turn his own game back on him. Her smirk widens into a full grin.
"You're avoiding the question," she says, clearly pleased with herself. "Enhances the sexual experience. Increases euphoria. Cite your source."
He is faltering. The game is losing its appeal. He is beginning to suspect her source is not some long-forgotten gossipy magazine article. And he does not want to picture her in this tiny airline bathroom, euphoric, with another man.
Their game goes both ways. But she doesn't need to remind him that she is desirable. He desires her all the time.
"A magazine," he says vaguely.
"What magazine?" she asks with a wink.
He frowns, trying to wrest control of this game back in his favor. "Applied Psychodynamics in Forensic Science."
"Never heard of it," she says immediately, a challenge thrown down.
"I'll get you a subscription. Now cite your source," he says calmly, hoping she is bluffing. Turning the tables on her.
"Oh, now you want to go down that route?" she says, eyes shifty. "Nah, nevermind."
She is bluffing. She wanted to make him squirm, but she's the one squirming now.
He keeps his face impassive. "You started it."
Her eyes meet his, and he knows immediately that he has miscalculated.
She sighs and rolls her eyes, shaking her head with an awkward smile. "Delta Airlines. Flight 11-09. Boston to Miami. March '93. Ken Fuller. Hazel eyes. Organic Chem Lab TA. BMOC."
His face is frozen, but his mind is whirling with images of Sara as a Harvard undergrad, flying to Miami for Spring Break with the "big man on campus". Of course. She attracts attention everywhere she goes. Half the lab rats have poorly-hidden crushes on her.
It is ridiculous to be jealous. Ridiculous to feel possessive over a woman he has never even kissed. Ridiculous to be jealous of something that happened in her past, long before she knew him. Ridiculous to believe she is nearly thirty years old and has never had sex with another man. Ridiculous to believe he could ever be what she wants, when she could have…the big man on campus.
She is still talking. Her smirk is less playful now. "Overrated. In every aspect."
She can read his jealousy. She knows this barb landed harder than she intended. She is trying to soften the blow. There's still a challenge in her voice. But the challenge is an offering. This Ken Fuller, he is not competition. He was overrated. There is still room in her life for a man who is not.
"Could we…get back to work?" she says, blushing and flustered. This game of theirs has unsettled both of them today.
"Yeah," he says slowly, setting down his microscope and rising to look into her eyes. "I think, due to your first-hand knowledge and experience in airplane bathrooms…you should do the swab."
He brushes past her, his hand grazing hers intentionally. He smiles so she knows his disapproving tone is only part of the game. He is not judging her. He is not angry. But neither is he unaffected. He wants to be the one with her in that airplane bathroom. She would not find that experience overrated. He would make sure of it.
His exit is a concession. She has won this round of their game.
They do not mention this moment again. Do not even allude to it. There is an unspoken truce. A silent agreement that they both need a break from this game.
They shift their attention back to the case. It is an intense night. A race against the clock to solve the case before the feds arrive and steal it out from under them.
He loves cases like these, where his whole team works as one. Usually they are split into pairs or small groups, spread across the city. It is rare for them all to be on one case, let alone in one room. Even Brass is there for the reenactment. It's like a homecoming. This is how he imagines holidays feel if you are born into a large extended family, boisterous siblings and cousins talking over one another, jockeying for attention.
It is Sara who breaks the case.
"Guys," she says, drawing their attention as they pretend to kick and stomp the dummy of the dead man. "If you jump a man at the exit, he dies at the exit."
But the victim did not die at the exit. He died five feet down the aisle, facing away from the hatch, trying to flee the mob. He was no longer a threat when they beat him to death.
Back at the precinct, he and Catherine finish filing the report and find the other members of their team in the breakroom debating the culpability of the mob, none of whom have been arrested.
"Well, it's wicked serious in here," Catherine says as they enter.
Sara turns to them, eyes flashing. "Yeah, well, we were just talking about murder and whether we would commit it. I couldn't. Warrick could. And Nick's on the fence. We're taking an exit poll."
She's furious, which is a sure sign that she's hurting.
He has learned a lot from working with her night in and night out for the last six months. Her sweet sunshiny disposition is only a part of who she is. Her righteous indignation is another part. She holds the world to a higher standard than most, to a standard it often fails to meet, and her disappointment at that failure is deep and personal.
But there is something else. Something he feels but cannot identify yet. Something he knows to be true long before he will know the full truth of it.
The world has hurt her. Life has hurt her. And she is never more angry than when she is reminded of that hurt.
Something has reminded her of that hurt today, and she is absolutely furious that the people she trusts, this little family of theirs, can so easily admit to the possibility that they could take a life under the right circumstances.
When Catherine agrees that she would kill to protect her daughter, Sara is incensed. "You didn't even hesitate!"
He watches her closely as she hangs her head. He looks past the judgment to the betrayal. To the pain.
"What do you think, Grissom?" she asks softly, raising her eyes to his. He can see the plea in her eyes. He knows she is not asking out of mere curiosity. She needs him to pass this test.
He takes a breath, and then reframes the argument, pointing out that the victim only became a threat once everyone ignored the warning signs that he was struggling. The man was ill, in the midst of a medical crisis, and not one person looked at him and saw that. They saw only the ways he was inconveniencing them.
He knows what it is to go unseen. He has been a ghost most of his life. It is only recently, only in the last year or so, as he has approached midlife, that he has begun to feel a part of anything. It is only since he met her that he has begun to feel seen.
He suspects Sara knows this feeling as well.
On the face of it, she is anything but a ghost. She is the life of the party. She walks in the room, and all eyes are on her. She is loud and assertive and stringent at times. She needles Nick and Warrick. Flirts with Greg and Dave. Goes toe to toe with Catherine. She has made a bigger imprint on this group in six months than he has ever made on any group. Ever.
But he is beginning to think this is a mask she wears. That somewhere under this facade there is another woman. One no one sees.
"If just one person had stopped and taken the time to look at the guy," he concludes. "To listen to him, to figure out what was wrong with him, it might not have happened. It took five people to kill him. Would have only taken one person to save his life."
The team is quiet, absorbing his words. And then his eyes meet hers, and the mask slips for just a second. Her gratitude, for his advice, for him, is right there. And it's almost too much for him to bear. He looks away, but the warmth of her gaze stays with him, spreading slowly through his body.
He has met her approval. No. More than that. He has made her proud. She has seen him, truly seen him, and she likes what she sees.
After that day, he feels a closeness to her that is deeper than what they had before. He aches to be near her, not to flirt and joke, but to feel like he is the person she sees when she looks at him like that. She makes him want to be a better version of himself. She restores his faith in the human being.
The next three weeks, he partners with her on nearly every case. He feels Catherine's eyes on him every time he says, "Sara, you're with me."
He knows he needs to stop. Needs to shuffle the team around. Needs to spend equal time mentoring all the younger members of his team. Needs to be careful not to show favoritism.
But he needs her.
So when he gets the call about the body dump in the desert two hours before the start of his next shift, he only hesitates for a second before calling her to back him up. She hates the bugs. Bees especially. But she soldiers through.
He should have known the second they saw the x-rays that this was going to be a hard case for her. A few years from now, he would have known immediately, and he would have tried to offer her extra support. But he doesn't know yet, why a woman with a face full of healed bone fractures is going to make Sara rage. He barely even looks at the x-rays, because he's so busy with his bugs.
When they meet the victim's husband, when he comes in voluntarily to answer their questions, they both know. They don't have the evidence to prove it yet, but this asshole is a wife beater and wife killer. He knows it. And Sara knows it.
The smirk on Scott Shelton's face is getting to both of them.
Sara slides him the file with the x-rays.
"Mr. Shelton, did your wife drive race cars?" he asks.
The man has the audacity to laugh. "You're kidding me."
"No. The two most common causes of facial trauma in adult women: motor vehicle accidents…and domestic violence."
The suspect tries to explain away the three separate domestic violence complaints against him. Tries to blame his wife for being 'excitable'.
"Like I said, I wrestled her off me. But I never, ever laid a hand on her."
"How about a gun?" Sara asks, her voice dripping with antipathy.
The man scoffs, shifts in his seat, uncomfortable with her accusation. Perhaps with her presence entirely. He looks to Grissom for camaraderie. "You've got your hands full with that one."
"So do you," he says immediately. Sara hears the compliment in his warning, and her eyes flicker with gratitude for just a second before hardening again.
Even if he didn't already suspect this man beat and then murdered his wife, he would revile him for this. He will never commiserate with a man threatened by a strong woman.
At the apartment, Brass and their suspect in tow, she is calm and collected as she sprays the hallway, looking for blood. Until she finds it.
Until their suspect says, "I have no idea how that got there."
Then her fury is unleashed. Her voice rises to a yell as she approaches him, finger pointed in accusation. "It got there…when you shot your wife in the head. Before you wrapped her in a blanket and dumped her in the mountains!"
The suspect smacks her hand away. "Get your finger out of my face, bitch!"
Grissom sees red, but Sara is already beyond that. She shoves the suspect, finger back in his face, yelling. "Touch me again, and you'll pull back a stump!"
He grabs her, shocked. He pulls her away, to protect her from the suspect, or to protect her from herself. Maybe both. He's shouting her name repeatedly, but she's not even acknowledging him. She has, at least, stopped lunging. She is still in his arms.
"Get him out here, Jim," he says to Brass, his hands still on her arms as Brass pulls the suspect into the living room.
"I told you she was a handful," the suspect snarls.
"You don't know a handful!" she yells, finger back up and pointing.
"Hey. Hey," he says gently, lowering her arm and trying to pull her attention away from the suspect and back to him. He should be angry with her for compromising the investigation, but all he feels right now is worried. He has never seen her like this. He has seen her angry a million times. But not like this. "What is wrong with you?"
"I am a woman, and I have a gun. And look how he treated me," she grinds out. "I can only imagine how he treated his wife."
Her fury melts away, replaced by an emptiness that worries him even more.
Everything, from the neighbor's statement to the bullets to the blood spatter, says he killed her five days ago.
Except the bugs.
The bugs say she's been dead three days. The suspect was in New Orleans three days ago.
He doesn't understand it. But the evidence doesn't lie.
The suspect cops to the spousal abuse, claims those incidents are responsible for the blood on his walls. And there's nothing they can do to prove him wrong.
The suspect walks.
He finds her asleep in the breakroom, the tea kettle screaming. He rescues the kettle and wakes her, refusing to think about how beautiful she looks asleep; how much he wants to wake up beside her. She has been up all night looking for evidence that Scott Shelton killed his wife, and she has come up empty handed.
He doesn't understand her obsession with this case. Why this is different than any other case she works night after night. He doesn't know what to say to her about it. So he says nothing.
Instead, he asks her to investigate Warrick. Again.
Later that night, he's in his office when she seeks him out. He assumes she has news about Warrick's failure to appear in court. About Ecklie's accusation that he was gambling instead.
But she's there about something else.
"You know how you say we're the victim's last voice?" she says quietly. "I thought it was our job to speak for Kaye Shelton."
"You don't crunch evidence to fit a theory," he says firmly. This isn't like her. And he doesn't like it.
"What if you hear the victim's screams?" she continues, her voice quiet and sad. All the anger gone out of her. "In the car? At the store?"
"You have empathy for her, Sara," he replies. "You want someone to pay for what was done to her. That's normal."
She is quiet for a minute, and he thinks this conversation is finished. That she will turn and go. He's sorry to see her hurting, but this is a part of the job. She knows that. She's not a rookie. She's been doing this job for years.
"You want to sleep with me?" she asks suddenly.
His whole body freezes. He does not understand the question.
Yes. Of course he does.
But also, no. Not like this.
What is she insinuating? Why is she asking him this? His heart is racing. His body is still frozen. She's not saying anything. He takes off his glasses, and looks at her carefully.
Finally he can think of nothing else to say except: "Did you just say what I think you said?"
"That way, when I wake up in a cold sweat under the blanket, hearing Kaye's screams…you can tell me it's nothing. It's just empathy."
She turns and walks away.
His heart breaks. For her. Because he doesn't want her dreams to be haunted by the horrors they see.
And for himself. Because he wishes he could hold her at night when she hears those screams.
He sits in the dark for a long time, just thinking. Thinking about all the decisions that brought them to this point. Thinking about how close they are to where they are supposed to be, and how far apart they still are.
He cannot bear to see her hurting like this. He hates when Sara is mad at him. But her disappointment is worse.
He goes over it all in his head one more time. The body in the desert, the bugs collected at the scene from the corpse. The fibers from the blanket.
The blanket.
Maybe. Just maybe.
He returns to the evidence lockers. Pulls out the blanket and unfolds it, paying special attention to the folds, the gathers, the creases left in the material. The body was not just draped in a blanket. Not just rolled up in it. Whoever dumped this body wrapped it tight. Maybe tight enough to keep the bugs out for a couple of days.
He is alone with his pig for hours, tracking the arrival of the insects. In between taking photos and writing in his log, he thinks of her. He hopes that whatever he discovers, it will give her peace. He hopes she will be proud of him again.
He hears her footsteps and knows it is her. Just…feels her. She is smiling. And his heart skips a beat.
He reaches for a crate and pulls it next to him, offering her the place beside him. She sits, and then pulls out a thermos of coffee, handing it to him. And then she pulls out a blanket and wraps it around his shoulders. Her hand lingers on his arm. Her eyes linger on his.
"Thanks," she says softly.
He is not even attempting to hide his smile anymore. He has never in his life felt more seen. More loved.
They sit in silence for a long time. Just…together. Whatever happens with this experiment, they are a team. They have done their best. They have seen each other and been seen.
After a long time, she says quietly, "She never had a chance. Men like Shelton, they never stop. No matter how many times they apologize. No matter how many times they promise it will never happen again. They never stop. They only escalate."
He knows this is true. He also knows, with a surety he can't explain, that she did not learn this in a textbook.
He nods quietly, giving her space to continue.
"She should have left," she says finally. "Someone was bound to die if she stayed."
Leaving is not that simple for victims of domestic violence. But he does not say that. He knows she understands this. There is no reproof in her voice, only sorrow. She's not talking about Kaye Shelton.
She's quiet again, and he sees her tug her blanket tighter around her, warding off the cold of the desert night. He reaches for his blanket immediately. She starts to protest, and he compromises by wrapping it around both of them. It's a large blanket. There's plenty to share.
She smiles at him again, and scoots closer. They record another round of observations and sip their coffee, snuggled together under his blanket. As always, their bodies seem drawn together by forces outside of their control.
He rests his hand on her back, stroking his thumb just once on the soft material of her blanket. This is inappropriate. Too much. He needs to stop. And then she leans her head against his shoulder, and his heart aches.
"Thank you," she says again. "For doing this."
He wants to tell her that she doesn't need to thank him. That this is his job. That he's doing this for Kaye Shelton. For the justice system. But they both know he would not be out here without her.
"Thank you," he says instead. There's so much more he wants to say, but he doesn't know where to start.
She lifts her head and looks at him, waiting. He drops his hand from her back to his lap. It will be years before he can put into words the way she restores his faith – the way she makes him want to live up to her expectations – and longer still before he can say it to her. For now, he can only talk around the feeling.
"For not giving up on me. For reminding me that sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right."
Her eyes glisten with tears, and he knows that she understands he's not just talking about the case. "Grissom," she says, and the longing in her voice breaks something inside him.
He lifts his hand from his lap and cups her cheek. The silence between them is heavy. His gaze drifts from her eyes to her mouth and then back to her eyes.
In that moment he knows two fundamental truths. He is completely, irrevocably in love with her. And he chose wrong.
That night, in the parking lot of the diner, when he asked her to join his team, that was the worst mistake of his life. Because he cannot undo that. He is her boss now. And if he kisses her right now, if he tries to correct his mistake, he will destroy both of their careers and both of their reputations.
He might be willing to risk his own. But he cannot subject her to an investigation. They will go back over every one of her cases. Internal Affairs will question not just the two of them, but anyone who has worked with them, looking for evidence of inappropriate behavior, favoritism. They will question her hiring. Her solve rate. Her capability.
She will lose her job. And even if she doesn't, no one will ever believe she got where she is on merit alone. It will follow her for years.
This morning, in the breakroom, when he asked her to look into Warrick again, she scoffed and said something about Warrick being his favorite. He told her that was why he needed her to do the investigation. So there could be no accusations of favoritism.
What he didn't say is that Warrick is not his favorite. She is.
And while he loves Warrick enough to make sure it's Sara who does his investigations, he loves Sara too much to subject her to one at all.
He knows what they will say about her.
He cannot be the reason they say those things.
He shakes his head and sighs, wishing desperately things were different. He slides his hand from her cheek, and picks up the notebook in his lap. "It's time to count," he says.
She nods slowly, and scoots away, picking up her own notebook, and he feels the loss of her touch acutely.
He was right. The blanket was the key. Kaye Shelton was dead five days before they found her body, not three.
But it's not enough for the Sheriff, who is convinced a jury won't understand the science.
So it's back to the drawing board, or the autopsy room, as it were. He's standing outside waiting for Doc Robbins when Sara confronts him again, frustrated that he has given up.
He spins a long story about the history of forensics and how they are a part of the process, and it is their responsibility to educate the public. And when his body arrives, he takes great pleasure in pulling back the blanket so she can see it's Kaye Shelton. The smile she gives him makes the pain of last night bearable.
And when she breaks the case, when she finds the blue teflon residue from the suspect's custom bullet in the victim's hair, he is so proud of her he could burst. She is so happy, teasing him about it being easier to educate the jury about bullets than bugs. Less Latin, she says, and he cannot stop the smile or the wink. He adores her.
It was not a mistake, he tells himself as he watches Brass slap handcuffs on Scott Shelton. Hiring her was not a mistake.
Look what she can do. Not just for these victims. Not just for this lab. But for him too. She reminded him of who he once was. She made him be the best version of himself.
She was made for this job. The lab needs her. He needs her.
It's true, he will always love her.
But hiring her was not a mistake.