This fic was written for the loverly Anni, who's birthday it was yesterday. We're bad friends... can't get time zones right and all that nonsense. But yay angst!

The weight of her palm on his shoulder didn't deter his mind from running on overdrive. "Grissom, everything will... everything will be okay."

The rush of the city outside seemed to invade his mind, a buzz that spread and grew, infecting his ears, nose, mouth, until the only thing he could hear were his own thoughts and the nothingness that accompanied the beating of his heart.

There were things he needed to say, things he needed to get off of his chest; there was so much inside, fighting to get out that he didn't know how to handle it, not in the slightest. Brass was...he was...and she was...and they were...

Nothing would be okay. Nothing would be o-fucking-kay, and he knew that, but he felt the need to lash out anyway. Like he didn't have a choice, like it wasn't him. "It's not going to be okay Sara; nothing is going to be okay." It didn't matter what she said, didn't matter what he said; there was nothing that could beat down his higher demons. There was nothing to bring him back down.

Shocked (but not really) she sat beside him on the bed, the palm he wanted back on his body for comfort was absent, instead it was clenching her own knee. "I don't know what to say, Gil. No matter what I say-"

"What?" he snapped, his tone clipped and harsh and cut right through her so fast, she almost gasped with the force of it. It wasn't him. It couldn't be him, not really, and yet he heard himself spitting out words with such distain. "What do you want to say?"

Sara punched her thighs and stood up, "Nothing! You know what, I don't want to say anything," she was seething, fuming, her nostrils flaring. "You wouldn't listen to what I had to say anyway..."

The beauty of the moment was what struck him. Her face was bright red and her ears looked as though they would catch fire, fully setting her ablaze. Her eyes too looked as though they would combust, or force him to; the scene was so human, so intense, that he cracked. He wanted nothing more than to...needed nothing more than…

Palms forward, some sort of supplication, Grissom went to speak but found any words of coherence blocked by the pounding of the blood in his head. She didn't have anything to offer him and hadn't pretended to, but had reached out to hold him and he'd denied it.

The one thing she could give wholly, completely, and he'd denied her. Sara sank back down on the bed, this time further from him.

"What you're feeling," she began in a cautious whisper, spreading her fingers out wide on her legs, digging in, holding on, "Is-"

"You have no business telling me how to feel." Grissom stated bluntly and regretted the brash words immediately. The words stabbed at him just as he was sure they did at her, and he died a little (a lot) inside.

"Fuck Grissom! I've never tried to tell you how to feel, all I've ever wanted was for you to just feel something, anything, and for you to let me be a part of that!"

"I guess just... being with each other isn't enough," he intoned, his voice pained and thick and she would have paid anything to be able to just kiss it all away but... it wasn't enough. As if it was her fault, as if she hadn't given him everything. "I thought this might get easier, I thought it was supposed to get easier."

"It doesn't," Sara whispered, her tone so final that she shocked even herself. "It won't." She wanted to tell him that it wasn't supposed to, and that's what made it worth it, but she couldn't bring herself to speak the words.

"I don't know if I can do this," again his palms up as if they were ready to catch his head as it fell.

Her heart seized completely, blood growing sluggish and stopping. "...Don't know if you can do what?"

There was another sigh, a pitiful small, ghost of a thing that made her blood begin to pump again, but in overtime. It was resignation, it was giving in. "I, I don't know."

With a slight upturn of the corner of her lips, she nodded, and let silent tears roll past the slope of her flushed cheeks. "Then tell me what you do know then Grissom, because I have no fucking clue."

"I can't, jesus, how did this, I can't do this, I can't..."

"You can't be with me?" she almost whispered, feeling the last glimmer of hope flutter away with his defeat. But he wouldn't speak or couldn't speak or something else and Sara had never felt so dizzy in her life. That rug that had been so easily laid when they'd begun their relationship was yanked out from under her so fast; she forgot what it even felt like.

"This isn't about Jim," she accused, standing, finding it quite difficult to keep still. Shifting her weight from foot to foot, it looked as if she were readying herself to administer the game-winning pitch. "And this isn't about what you had to do tonight, this is about you being scared." After a beat, she added, "Of me."

That caught his attention, and Grissom snapped his neck up. "...of us," she finished, worrying her thumbs against the outside of her index fingers.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Sara!" He too stood, moving to the doorway and then out into the hallway, finding himself eventually in the kitchen. She followed, clomping heavily behind him, her work boots surely leaving scuff marks on his floor.

Hands on her hips, an image of pure defiance, she spat, "What? Run away from me? What?"

"I'm gonna fuck this up, what we have-"

"You're fucking it up right now! Do you see me running?" Blinking in thought, she allowed her arms to fall by her side and dropped her voice a bit. "I'm fucking it up, but we're doing this," moving her hands between them emphatically, "We're working though this!"

There was a buzzing in his ears, a shrill ring, a little from the cloudy confusion in his mind, but mostly from the fury. He was angry at her for being right, and at himself for being, well, like she had said...fucking terrified.

"I don't know how to work through this, and maybe I don't want to try right now."

It was the equivalent of an ice-cold, liquid slap in the face and Sara moved back, physically stunned. "Oh," she choked out because she just couldn't scream. "Oh."

He couldn't stop himself, the words rushing out in a release of pain; when she hurt, he hurt, and by tearing out her soul he was inflicting the same punishment on himself, a self-administered torture that he thought was warranted. And thinking about it, he came to the realization, "Maybe this was all wrong to begin with."

Stunned, hurt, and angered beyond any level she thought possible, she finally spoke, "Don't say that."

But he turned away, his back as cold as the words he'd uttered earlier. Bile in her throat and fire in her eyes, she fought the urge to either vomit or sit down. Instead, she steeled herself and moved forward, gripping the pillar between his living room and kitchen with such force she thought her nails would pop off.

"No, you know what? Say it again." she requested, and there was a calmness to her voice that could only be explained as carefully contained rage, "Say that again and look at me."

She saw the concrete settle in his shoulders, and when he didn't release the breath that held in all the tension she found herself afraid of what he would do, what he would say. But he did nothing, just stood with his back to her in the sterility of his kitchen. Sara's jaw ticked and she waited, giving him the benefit of the doubt... again.

But there was nothing, he gave her nothing, no indication of his remorse or his support of his previous statement, no defiance. There was only silence, silence coupled with the pounding beat in her chest; it was enough to trigger a hellstorm of emotion. "Damn you Grissom! Why won't you communicate with me? Give me something; I just can't stand your indifference."

When he made to turn to her she was quick to assert, "Hell, I'll even take your anger."

And maybe that spurred him, or maybe his tether had snapped, but Gil Grissom turned in a fury that he'd never felt before, fueled by the woman in front of him. "Sara, you forced your way into my life, I didn't want it, didn't ask for it... and I can't say whether I want it now." With that he threw his hands up in the air and stomped away.

And Sara, for all of her fury, grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on-a dirty mug-and threw it against the wall.

The blue-coated porcelain shattered and skittered to the floor, the shards on their trek across the hardwood the only sound after the fact.

"Fuck you." she spat, hurling her words at him with the same force that she had unleashed breaking the mug.

And that's all she could come up with; she felt so much, all at once, that the only thing she could utter was an obscenity, an obscenity with such malice that she shocked even herself. "Really Grissom, I thought... I thought we were more than this, I'm sorry, but I really did."

There was a resignation in her tone, but also a bitter sweetness that ate away at his resolve; the anguish in her eyes and the slight quake in her bottom lip slowly unraveled the hidden fears deep in his psyche, bringing them to light, fears that he had been far too afraid to even acknowledge. "I love you too much to let myself do this to you."

Sara rolled her eyes, bit her lips and hung her head, tears readily available though not spilling over the edge. "Griss-"

"I really do, and I can't."

"Well," she scuffed her foot as she felt the tears well over. "Then I guess I can't either."

After a moment, she turned towards the door and walked towards it purposefully, without her coat or bag.

Grissom called after her, "Wait!"

She stopped in her exit and waited for him to continue. "Please Sara; I want to... help me..."