Cecilia felt a weight settle beside her, and drowzily opened her eyes to see Jim Brass perched at the edge of the bed, smiling at her. He was holding a ceramic mug from which curled tendrils of steam. "Okay, I'm a little late, but here's that coffee I promised. Just cream, right?"

In the light of morning there was no awkwardness, no regret. No shame to colour the exquisite joy of the night before. Jim was gazing at her as though it was entirely natural that she wake up there in his bed. She observed that he was bare chested, wearing only striped cotton pajama bottoms. His hair was slightly damp and his skin had a ruddy, freshly scrubbed glow. Cecilia's fingers itched to curl in the dark hairs above his navel, but she resisted the urge. "Yes, thank you," she answered instead.

"How do scrambled eggs sound? There's enough time for a quick shower first, if you like." Jim nodded to the ensuite bathroom. Cecilia nodded her appreciation of both ideas. He leaned to set the mug on the end table beside her, then stood. He titled his head and smiled at her again for a moment, then padded out of the room, his bare feet making soft footfalls on the wood floor.

Cecilia sat up, stretching luxuriously. She had slept wonderfully, falling asleep in Jim's arms, in a deep, dreamless slumber. The memory of their lovemaking washed over her, and her body warmed at the remembrance. Jim was an incredible lover. Cecilia knew from past experience that the first time with a man wasn't always that wonderful, and that it often took time to learn a new lover's body, and they yours. It was a delight to be so in tune with someone, taking and receiving pleasure so readily.

She noticed the navy, terry cloth robe at the end of the bed, below her feet and knew at once that Jim had left it for her use. Sliding out from between the cool, Egyptian cotton sheets, and picking up the robe, Cecilia made her way to the bathroom.

Shortly afterwards, she sat perched on a wooden stool at the kitchen island, kitty-corner from Jim. The blue robe was belted at her waist, her towel-dried hair hanging over her shoulders. Since Jim was in pajamas, she hadn't felt any pressure to change into her black dress, and Cecilia was enjoying the easy companionship of their shared meal in the comfort of terrycloth. Jim had prepared scrambled eggs for both of them, and lightly buttered toast, setting a bottle of ketchup on the countertop between them, which she had declined and which he had squeezed liberally over his portion.

"This coffee is wonderful," Cecilia told him over the brim of her mug. She was on her second cup and savouring each delicious sip.

Jim grinned at her. "It's Blue Hawaiian," he chuckled. "I used to razz Greg Sanders about his predilection for it. Then one day he gave me a cup. I was hooked. After that it became an occasional extravagance. Don't say anything to Sanders though, or I'll never live it down." He winked at Cecilia.

"Your secret is safe with me," she grinned back engagingly.

Jim insisted on cleaning up the few dishes on his own, and he shooed Cecilia into the livingroom. She stood before the wall unit, running her fingers over the spines of an extensive CD collection. There was older, fifties and sixties music, with some classical country equally represented in the mix.

"If there's anything that catches your interest, go ahead and put it on," Jim's voice behind her suggested.

Cecilia looked at him over her shoulder. Her radio dial, both at home and in her car, were set to a new country station, but Cecilia also knew and liked many of Jim's selections. She picked a Four Tops CD and put it on the stereo.

"I like my rock with a little roll," Jim was telling Cecilia over her shoulder. As the first strains of music sounded over the hidden speakers, he took her hand and led her to the comfortable leather sofa. He settled back in one corner, and Cecilia sat beside him, leaning back across his lap and against his chest.

She listened as he told her about his parents, 'a proverbial Donny and Marie', only his father was the one who was a little bit country, his mother a little bit rock and roll. Growning up, he would sit in the livingroom of their small, two-storey home, and by day the radio would be tuned to his mother's twisting beat, and then when his father would come home from work, the dial would be turned to a country station. The young Jim had developed an appreciation for both genres of music, and had stayed true to those roots throughout his lifetime. He admitted to taking a bit of a ribbing as a teen, and then in college, for his choice.

Cecilia loved the sound of Jim's voice and the mellifluous tones that brought to life his younger years back in New Jersey. She could imagine him as a child, creeping down the stairs to the kitchen some nights, where once a month or so his father would gather with some buddies, to play poker. Sometimes, when the b eer had been flowing freely, the elder Brass would pick up his guitar and sing the songs of Johnny Cash, Buck Owens and Faron Young. And Jim, Jimmy as they had called him back then, would sit in the shadow and listen while the heavy blue smoke of the men's cigarettes would hang in the air that reverberated with the familiar country chords.

He spoke of his parents with deep affection. And it was apparent that growing up Jim had been very close with his older brother, Peter. Almost three years younger than his sibling, Jimmy Brass had nonetheless made an effort to keep up with him. Jim admitted to Cecilia that he was the rough and tumble child, the one who was always active and physical. The child who always had bruises and skinned knees, and who broke his wrist falling out of a tree and his collarbone tobogganing. He spoke fondly about Peter's indulgence of him, always including the young Jim on his neighbourhood jaunts with his own friends.

Cecilia smiled to herself, her head against Jim's chest, the dark hairs there curling softly beneath her cheek, while his heart below pumped a steady, comforting beat. In turn, it was her voice painting pictures for Jim about her own formulative years. She reminisced about the dry cleaning business that her parents owned, where they worked hard to just get by. Cecilia recalled the astrigent, chemical smell of the place, and some of the Sunday mornings that she and her siblings would spend earning pocket money by slipping the paper shields with the name of the business, over wire hangers.

She was the oldest of three, she told Jim, and the only daughter. The quiet, shy child who lived in a world of her own making. Always dreaming, always creating fantasy people and stories, Cecilia had been the little girl with the imaginary friend. She was the introvert, who was always engrossed in a book, and who delighted in school. Sentimental, she was the child who cried over posters of lost pets, and wept over Charlotte's Web.

Her parents worked long hours, but they would set aside most Sunday afternoons when they would load up the station wagon with a picnic hamper and drive out to the surrounding Pennsylvania countryside. Some of Cecilia's favourite memories were of those outings, where the family was together, relaxing, enjoying potato salad and ham sandwiches on a worn blue checkered blanket.

They shared their memories while Motown played quietly in the background. Jim rested his cheek on the top of Cecilia's head, enjoying the feel of her tucked against his chest. He held her left hand in his, his arm curved around behind her waist. She spoke like a writer, Jim thought. Clearly Cecilia had an affinity for words, and an ability to express her thoughts with an effortless clarity that he both admired and envied. And she was a wonderful listener, knowing how to draw him out, with an innate understanding of those things he wanted to communicate but wasn't certain how to do so.

Jim wasn't even sure how many times the album had cycled through a repitition, or how far the hands of the clock had swept since breakfast, and he didn't care. He was content to laze there, with Cecilia in his arms. He was tired, because even though he had finally drifted off to sleep in the hours before dawn, his rest had been fitful, plagued with vague, unhappy dreams. Apparently his libido hadn't gotten the memo though, and when there came a lull in their conversation, Jim found himself cupping Cecilia's chin and turning her face up to his for a kiss.

Her response had been immediate, the kiss deepening rapidly from one of slow sensuousness to passionate ardour. When Cecilia undid the belt of the robe, allowing him access to the warmth of her curves, Jim had a moment to be grateful that he wasn't due in to work until later that afternoon, before he abandoned himself to her arms.

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"I really don't understand you, Grissom!" Catherine Willows snapped angrily, her blue eyes dark with her annoyance. "When were you planning to say something? When it came time to introduce our new co-worker? Don't you think that maybe...just maybe...the fact that Sara has quit might be the kind of thing to talk about?"

Catherine had been stunned to come in to work tonight, one day after Elliott Keeth's funeral and her ensuant night off, to learn from Nick that Sara had quit. Apparently, Sara had given Gil her resignation Tuesday morning, the morning after her blow up with Catherine...and indirectly Cecilia...in the breakroom. And dumfoundingly, Gil had headed off to Reno for his conference, without a single word to anyone. It wasn't as though he had been incommunicado. He could have called Catherine, at home or at work, to share this momentous development.

Beneath Catherine's shock, lay an indefinable guilt. She knew logically that she hadn't done anything to precipitate the argument with Sara, and she didn't really believe that that incident had been the catalyst for Sara's decision to leave. But on the peripherary of her conscious mind was the understanding that Sara's resignation had something to do with Gil. With the tension between the two, and the unspoken thoughts and emotions that always swirled just below the surface of their working relationship. Perhaps...if Catherine had been a better friend to Gil, they might have discussed this. Perhaps...if she had been a better colleague to Sara...she could have initiated some sort of dialogue and helped Sara find her way out of whatever abyss had claimed her, or at least helped her to reconcile her feelings about Gil from her feelings about her job. But now it was too late. Sara Sidle had quit and Gil Grissom was sitting at his desk staring back at Catherine with a stoic disassociation that made her want to throttle him.

"This is the first night I've been in since Sara handed in her resignation," Gil told Catherine calmly.

"Okay, I'll give you that. Putting aside the fact that you've got a damn phone and could have called me at any time in the last couple of days...I do recall that we both came into the building at the same time tonight, and even shared an elevator ride. Plenty of opportunity to say, 'Hi, and by the way, Sara is leaving.' But noooo, instead I have to hear about it from Nick, who has to learn of it from Helen Chang!" It was Sara's and Warrick's night off so since she couldn't confront the brunette, Catherine had focused her confusion on the supervisor.

Gil rested his elbows on the table and tented his fingers. "Why is it my place to say anything, if Sara hasn't told people?" he asked blandly.

''Have you talked to her at all?" Catherine demanded in exasperation.

Gil regarded her with piercing blue eyes. "What am I supposed to say, Catherine?"

Catherine sighed her frustration. "I guess...if you still don't know..." her words trailed off, and her slim shoulders slumped in dejection.

"People move on," Gil said coolly. "We've been lucky to have the team together as long as we have. Change was inevitable. If not Sara, than Nick, or Warrick, or I. You. Sara's an adult and I'm sure she's doing what's best for Sara. Even if..," Gil paused, his mouth working around the words, seeming to weigh them, "even if the team will miss her." He shrugged. "Maybe Sara didn't say anything because she doesn't want a long good bye."

Catherine stared at Gil, her lovely features inscrutable. "No cake in the breakroom?" she asked softly. Then she left the room, and with it Grissom's ensuing silence.

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"So how was your night off?" Catherine asked Cecilia nonchalantly. She was trying not to think about her earlier conversation with Grissom and all of its ramifications.

"Fine," Cecilia answered, paging through a forensic magazine that featured an article by Dr. Al Robbins. She studiously avoided looking up at the blonde.

"Just fine?" Catherine repeated curiously. "You weren't too bored...holed up there in your apartment, all by yourself?"

"I was certainly not bored, no," Cecilia replied, continuing to stare at the printed page as though it were the most riveting thing she had ever read.

"So, did you do anything...interesting, last night?" Catherine tried to keep her expression deadpan as she continued to quiz the other woman, in case Cecilia should raise her dark eyes from the magazine.

"Oh, you know. Nothing that you'd want to hear about, I'm sure," Cecilia told her evasively.

"I didn't do much myself," Catherine confessed. "Lindsey and I had lasagna and popped in a Harry Potter movie. I asked Brass if he wanted to stay for dinner, but apparently he had plans. So, it was just me and Linds."

"Movie night sounds nice," Cecilia remarked casually.

"I got the feeling he had a hot date," Catherine went on.

"Harry Potter?" Cecilia queried innocently.

"Um, no. Jim Brass. But you knew who I meant," Catherine accused lightly.

"Oh. Captain Brass. Well, that's nice," Cecilia replied earnestly.

"Cecilia!" Catherine exclaimed, unable to contain her grin any longer. "Tell me! Were you out with Jim last night?" In the last weeks that she had been working with the novelist, Catherine had felt a growing bond. She was comfortable with Cecilia, trusted her, and believed that the other woman trusted her in return. Each sensed in the other something to respect and admire. Catherine believed that they were fast forging a genuine friendship, and she knew that when it came time for Cecilia to leave, her abscence would leave a void. Because Catherine felt so close to her, she was comfortable enough to talk to her about Jim Brass.

"Now that you mention it," Cecilia answered slowly, consideringly, "I do believe that I was."

"Uh huh, I knew it!" Catherine announced triumphantly. For the first time, Cecilia looked up at her, her tan features lit with a grin, her dark eyes gleeful. "So where did you go? Did you have fun?"

"A fabulous seafood restaurant called the Poseidon. And yes, I had a wonderful time." Cecilia's smile was soft.

"So do you think you'll go out with him again?" Catherine wanted to know.

"I hope so, yes," Cecilia nodded her dark head.

"He's a really great guy," Catherine told her.

"So you've said before," Cecilia acknowledged teasingly. And then more seriously, "And I agree."

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Gil sat in his darkened office, and stared at the computer screen, it's green glow giving his drawn features an eerie cast. He had turned out the lights in the room, sensitive to them as he struggled against the last vestiges of the migraine that had first sought to decimate him back in Reno. If anyone had walked in on him then, they would have thought his monicker of Gruesome Grissom an apt one.

He couldn't understand why he was putting this off. It was imperative that he create a posting for the job. Sara's job. She had given him two additional weeks, grudgingly, but a month was not very long to interview and hire another CSI. And it was his responsibility to ensure that whomever they added to the team would not only be a competent criminalist, but a good fit with the existing members.

He had a valid excuse for not having created the job listing yet. He'd been away from the office. But Grissom was back now, and he couldn't wait any longer. He had to get the posting in the system. Otherwise no one was going to apply for a position that they weren't even aware was available.

Still, the command to type seemed to short circuit somewhere between his brain and his fingers.

Catherine was mad at him, Grissom knew. As though this was somehow his fault. As though he was some omnipotent being who could control something as inexorable as the passage of time, and snap his fingers and somehow pre-empt Sara's delivery of her resignation letters. As though he, Gil, could somehow convince Sara to reconsider.

He was not responsible for the actions and behaviours of another human. He didn't want that responsibility and he refused to accept it. Catherine had told him once, the first time Sara had requested a leave of abscence, that whether Gil liked it or not, people were building a family around him. That they had needs and expectations and looked to him to fulfill them. The conversation had been unnerving. Part of him had been angry, unwilling to be in that position. He'd spent a lifetime creating a distance between himself, devoting himself to his career, rather than relationships or family. To think that it was some cruel trick of fate, the ultimate joke that his successful ascension in his career had resulted in his having to face that very thing he had been shunning, was an affrontry.

And the truth of it was...he just didn't have it in him to give.

Gil recalled the first day Sara Sidle had walked into the Las Vegas lab. It had been a year since he had last seen or spoken to her, not since he had gone to San Francisco to work in tandem with the unit there, valuable for his entomological expertise. Sara had sauntered through the hall, with that endearing slouched gait, and her smile, when their eyes had met, had stirred in Gil something he had refused to acknowledge. Her permanent addition to the team, after Holly Gribbs had succumbed to the gunshot wounds she had sustained, had proven to be beneficial to the unit, and it was that contribution that Grissom had concentrated on.

Now, just a few short years later, Sara was moving on. Her worth to the team...to him...summed up in a few short lines on a standard job posting form. A clinical description of her ranking and job responsibilities. Nothing there to encapsulate her intensity and devotion to her job, her bright, quick mind, her dogged determination to follow the evidence and never give up, or her fierce desire to see justice prevail. Pain stabbed at his temple.

Gil's fingers flew over the keyboard, filling out the required fields. He didn't stop until he hit enter and when his screen indicated his electronic submission had been sent and received, he closed his eyes and bowed his head.