Ever since the night he reappeared on her doorstep with salads from her favorite deli and told her that her job was safe, things between them have changed. They are spending lots of time together now, outside of work, having breakfast together regularly and relaxing together at her home or his, watching movies and talking. Once her suspension is over, they are working together again too, more happily now.
There is still the charged energy sometimes, the tension between them when they straddle the line between friends and…more. He's still not sure what to do about it, not sure either of them is ready to take that final step over the line. He knows though, that they are getting closer, and that as scary as it may be, it's far less scary than the future he imagined without her. She seems to enjoy those moments again, too, like she used to in the beginning.
But today, something isn't right. They're in her kitchen. She's making coffee while he scrambles eggs, and he can feel the old anger crackling in her. He wants to ask her what's wrong, but he doesn't know how.
He doesn't think it's work. She and Greg just wrapped up a boring breaking and entering case while he and Sofia worked a suspected murder that turned out to be natural causes. Before that, they all worked together to solve the murder of a young mother who died after a night out with friends. None of that would upset her.
She pours water into the machine, sloshing some over the side, and mutters a curse. She's definitely angry.
He continues stirring the eggs, giving her time to work out what she wants to say to him.
"Sofia seems to be settling in," she says finally. "Greg thinks she's fitting in nicely."
"Yeah," he says. "I know she's upset about the demotion, but we can benefit from her experience."
"I heard she wanted to quit," she says.
He says nothing, keeping his back to her as he removes the eggs from the heat.
"Well," she says, and her voice is so sharp it slices right through him. "You can be very persuasive when you want someone to stay
He opens a cabinet and pulls out plates for each of them, plating the eggs and adding the vegetarian bacon he already browned and some fruit.
"Did you tell her the lab needs her?" she asks. "Was that enough to convince her to stay?"
He turns to look at her finally, and sees not just anger but betrayal in her eyes. And fear.
"The lab does need her," he says gently. "The team is short staffed. Greg has only been credentialed for a few weeks and can't work independently. We need her."
"You need her?" she counters.
"No," he says immediately. "No, Sara."
"How was dinner?" she asks. "I guess you knew exactly what to do about…that."
She's throwing their whole, complicated history in his face, and he would be angry if she wasn't so obviously in pain. She's never more angry than when she's hurting.
"Dinner was fine," he says calmly. "I expensed it. It served its purpose. I'm glad she decided to stay."
"You seem to enjoy working with her," she says.
He takes a slow breath. "I do. Just like I enjoyed working with Catherine. And Warrick. And Nick. I think you would enjoy working with her too, if you gave her a chance."
He hands her a plate.
"I made the eggs just the way you like," he says gently. "I got free range eggs and that ridiculously overpriced gruyere from the farmer's market."
He sees her eyes soften as she hears his unspoken message.
"How does Sofia like her eggs?" she asks quietly, and he knows she is giving him an opening, not making an accusation.
"I have no idea," he says, and she smiles at him shyly. He smiles back, and she blushes and shakes her head, averting her eyes. He can see that she's embarrassed about this entire conversation, but he's glad it's out there. He's glad she brought it up rather than letting it fester.
The coffee pot beeps, and he hands her his plate. "Take those to the table. I'll make our coffees," he says. And then, before she can turn, he reaches out and strokes her cheek.
This thing between them, he still does not know what to do about it. But he is getting closer to figuring it out.
As winter slides toward spring, things continue much the same as they have.
At work, Sara softens to Sofia, and he was right: they do enjoy working together. Greg is coming along too, thanks in large part to Sara's mentoring.
He thinks Ecklie assigned him Greg in the split as an insult, taking his two most experienced team members and leaving him Sara — who they all know would quit rather than being reassigned — and Greg, whose credentials were so new the ink wasn't even dry on the paperwork.
But Ecklie doesn't know the first thing about team building, and he has no idea that he's done them a favor by keeping Sara and Greg together. She is the best at what she does, and she is an excellent teacher. That and the fact that Greg adores her and is always eager to impress her, means he is progressing faster than anyone could have predicted.
Outside of work, things are much the same as well. They spend most of their free time together now. It's become so routine, they have begun to take it for granted and only discuss their schedules when other plans force them to spend time apart.
Though they started off rotating pretty evenly between his place and hers, lately they default to her place. It's not because he doesn't like having her in his home — on the contrary, he's beginning to find it quiet and lonely without her. It's just that her place feels more comfortable, more warm and welcoming. It's small and cozy compared to his condo, but it's not really about the size. Everything is bright and cheerful and welcoming at her place. There are pillows and throw blankets and framed photos everywhere. It feels like home.
Sometimes they venture out, though usually not anywhere too public. Mostly out into nature, hiking and exploring. She likes to bring a camera, and he has come to realize that many of the nature and landscape photographs in her apartment are photos she has taken. On one of their hikes, at the summit of the trail, a bubbly woman in her twenties offers to take a photo of the two of them, and Sara hesitates before handing her camera over, looking at him for his permission.
He nods encouragingly, and she gives him a smile so wide his heart feels like it will explode. Two weeks later, he sees that same smile in the photograph. The thrill he feels when he finds it framed and sitting on her desk in her living room surprises him.
They're nearing the end of a relatively boring shift when the call comes in about the 4-19 in the hotel room. He and Sara go with Brass and find a flight attendant stabbed to death on the bed.
They process the room, which has been cleaned thoroughly, and then he meets Doc Robbins at the morgue for a rundown of autopsy results.
When Ecklie pages him with an oblique message about having additional details about the case, he sends Sara in his place. He tells her he's in the middle of something, and it's not a lie, but he also wants to force Ecklie to work with her. Aside from a brief conversation when she returned from her suspension, she and Ecklie are still dancing around one another, each pretending the other doesn't exist.
Things between Sara and Catherine are much more repaired, thankfully. He would like to take partial credit for that given his intercessions to Catherine on Sara's behalf. But if he's honest, it's Sara's apology — as genuine as it is voluntary — that softens Catherine.
For as much as she and Sara have fought over the years, he knows Catherine cares about Sara and understands how the job can wear on a person. Once she's past her offense to Sara's attack, she's mostly worried. He does not tell Catherine anything that Sara told him that day when she finally opened up to him, but he does ask her to trust him when he tells her that Sara has her reasons for being sensitive, and that he and she are both working toward handling those emotions better.
Catherine has moved on, and it's past time that Ecklie accepts that Sara isn't going anywhere and treats her as the integral part of the team that she is. So, he sends Sara in his stead to gather whatever evidence Conrad has for him.
The next time he sees her, Sara is practically vibrating with the focused in-the-zone energy he loves to see in her.
When they first saw their victim, stabbed to death in her hotel bed, he worried that the case might be emotional for her. He's been watching her surreptitiously all day, looking for signs that she is thinking about her father, thinking about that terrible night. But she seems fine, and he doesn't think she's faking it.
It's amazing, honestly, how much better she seems to be doing now than she was just a couple months ago. There have been a few rough cases for her since the day she told him about her childhood and the night that changed her life, but instead of shutting down and lashing out, she comes to him now and they talk about it, or don't talk and just sit quietly together until she's feeling better.
She tells him all about the algorithm to remove the background pattern on the sheets and isolate the bloody fingerprint from Ecklie's cold case, and he takes the print to the judge, but fails to come back with a warrant.
That barely slows her down. The next thing he knows, Sara has met with the suspect's wife, rattling her enough that she makes a phone call to warn her husband, and Sara has tracked his cell phone to within two blocks of a certain cell phone tower then checked hotel registrations in that area, finding the suspect registered at the Tangiers.
"Well done," he says softly when she's finished rattling off her findings. She smiles, clearly pleased with his praise, but also just pleased with herself. He is worrying less and less lately about inappropriate validation. The more time they spend together, the more he understands that their need for validation from each other is both mutual and appropriate.
Before he can say anything else, Greg bursts into the room and informs him that the semen collected from rape kit is positive for cocaine. They don't normally run drug screens on rape kit samples, and he says as much. But Greg counters that their suspect has a record for cocaine possession and distribution, so he ordered the test.
He looks back and forth between Sara and her protege and smiles broadly. "Wow, you guys are rendering me obsolete," he says.
Their suspect, it turns out, is not the killer. Just the cocaine dealer for the first victim, who found her body and ran before he could be blamed. It does not take them long to puzzle out who the actual killer is – the hotel manager. And it takes Sara no time to come up with a trick that leads the man to incriminate himself and give them the location of the evidence he has stolen as a trophy.
She leaves for the day before he does, in a dance that is becoming a familiar routine, and he lingers around the lab for a half hour catching up on paperwork before heading out as well, turning left out of the parking lot instead of right as he has done for years.
It's a really satisfying case, and they are both still a little high on adrenaline when he arrives at her place. He has plans for a mushroom quiche, and she cleans and slices the mushrooms and grates the cheese while he makes a pie crust from scratch. He scoots past her to put the dough in the freezer to chill before he rolls it out, brushing a hand across her waist as he passes.
He loves when they work together like this in her tiny kitchen, especially after working together at the lab all night, where they have to be so conscious of every touch, every look. He pulls the eggs and cream from the fridge and returns to his spot at the counter. She reaches without being asked for the whisk in the jar in front of her and hands it to him. He reaches for it, letting his fingers glide across the back of her hand before closing around the utensil. When he glances at her face, her lips are pursed, and he knows she's trying to hold back a smile. He winks at her, and she gives up all pretense and beams at him.
She is finished with her tasks long before he is, but she lingers in the kitchen with him, chatting about nothing in particular, while he works. Eventually she takes a few steps over to the front door, where his briefcase is sitting, and plucks out the folded newspaper poking out the top.
He smiles at her as she brings it back into the kitchen, laying it on the counter and assessing the half-finished crossword puzzle, and then checks on his pie crust, now baking in the oven.
He hears her give a cluck of censure as he pulls the pie plate from the oven. He sets it down to cool and sees her shaking her head, a smirk on her face, as she picks up a pen.
He moves behind her, so close they are almost touching, and looks over her shoulder to see her filling in the answer. Fourteen across: Bell sister; of the moors. She is printing in her looping script: Emily Bronte. He nods in appreciation. He had forgotten the pseudonyms of the Bronte sisters: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
"Disappointing," she teases, turning to face him. She leans back against the counter so she can look at him, clearly enjoying herself. "You missed a Bronte sister? Really? This is Literature 101. Is it because she's a woman? You need to spend less time rereading your dead old white men and branch out."
"Sara," he says, infusing his voice with as much disapproval as possible.
"Gil," she counters, mimicking his tone, her lips quirking up at the corners.
He loves when she says his name. Loves even more that she only says it like this, when they are alone together. Like it is something special between them. The first time she said it, she held very still after, waiting for his reaction, as if he might not allow it, and he reached out impulsively and squeezed her hand, aching for her to say it again.
He gives in first, laughing, and she joins him, her eyes sparkling. She is so beautiful, truly a "goddess in his eyes".
His laughter quiets as he remembers the rest of the passage, and she looks at him, intrigued and waiting.
"I never told my love vocally," he begins to quote softly. "Still, if looks have a language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame – shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses."
Her teasing smile is gone, and he can see her chest rising and falling slow and steady as she listens to him recite, as she hears his apology in Heathcliff's lines.
When he finishes, she is gazing up at him adoringly, and he is transported back to the day under the pier. But this time, she is not a wide-eyed innocent caught up a little in her hero worship. She is his best friend. She has seen him at his worst, and she is still looking at him like that.
He has never been more acutely aware of how lucky he is. And he knows exactly what to do about this.
He slides his hand from the counter to her waist, gives her a small smile, and raises an eyebrow. He gives her a chance to change her mind, to tell him no. But she is not going anywhere. Instead, she makes a soft sound in her throat as her breath catches in anticipation. He lifts his other hand to her cheek, and then tips his head forward, capturing her mouth with his.
When they part, her cheeks are pink, and her eyes sparkle, and he is somehow more enchanted by her than he already was.
Then she says softly, "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
He should have known that she too would have a quote handy, and that hers would put his to shame. He tries, and fails, to respond and then decides the only possible response is to kiss her again. So he does, and he feels her smile against his mouth and slide one hand up his chest and around the back of his neck, her fingers stroking at his hair and holding him to her as if she cannot get enough of him and does not want to let him go.
He has wondered at times if seven years of waiting has built this moment up to be something more than it is; if they would be disappointed. But as her lips move under his, warm and inviting, he finds it is beyond all his expectations, and worth every moment of the wait.