Author's Note: Thanks so much everyone! Please enjoy this chapter. Or try to, I guess:)
Someone Else's Star
by Kristen Elizabeth
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much. – Robert Greenleaf
If she'd been the type of person to run away from her problems, Sara could have taken a two-month vacation with all the time she had stored up. But in the end, she simply couldn't take the chicken-shit way out. She gave herself one night to lick her wounds, but that was it. At the start of her next shift, she entered the lab, determined to leave everything personal at the door.
Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be easier said than done.
Nick was the first person she saw in the locker room. "Sara," he greeted her, surprised. "You're not at the hospital."
She frowned, wondering if she'd missed a page. "Should I be?"
"We figured you had to be at death imminent if you called in sick."
That earned him a deadly look. "At the risk of dating myself, 'that's so funny, I forgot to laugh.'"
Nick grinned. "Sorry."
Sara shrugged one shoulder. "It's okay." She hesitated, her hand on her locker's combination dial. "Did Grissom say anything about my absence?"
"Got me. He still hadn't clocked in by the time I went out to my scene." Nick paused. "Actually, I kind of thought…" He stopped himself.
"Thought what?" she asked softly.
Shaking his head, Nick closed his locker's door. "Nothing. Just runnin' my mouth." Another pause. "See you at assignments."
When he left, the room was too empty, too silent. Sara quickly stowed her bag and pulled her vest off its hangar. She'd just slipped it on when the door swung open and Grissom entered.
They froze at the exact same millisecond.
He stopped at the last possible moment and looked down at her. His voice trembled with anticipation. "Honey…are you ready?"
Her hands stroked his upper back. "Please don't make me wait any longer."
"No more waiting," he promised. He kept his word a moment later when they came together, her gasp mingling with his groan.
Sara looked away first. Clearing her throat, she turned to face her locker and zipped up her vest. She could hear him copying her motions of a few minutes ago as he retrieved his own vest. Sara closed her eyes. He was too near. It was too soon. She had to get out of there.
But like he could sense her need to flee, Grissom finally spoke. "Are you feeling better?"
She turned her head slowly to stare at him. "You really just asked me that, didn't you?"
He fumbled with his zipper. When it wouldn't budge, he gave up on it with a sigh. "Sara…"
"I'm fine, Grissom. If that's what you need to hear…I'm okay." She slammed her locker door shut; the clash of metal on metal bounced off the walls. "Never better."
"Sara," he tried again. "Wait."
"For you?" Sara yanked the door open. "Not anymore."
She had her coffee perfectly doctored and was chatting with Greg about the merits of his favorite band of the week by the time he showed up for assignments. She felt secure in the knowledge that she'd be partnered with Catherine or one of the guys from then on, no exceptions.
But Grissom's predictability lay in his unpredictability. The first words out of his mouth were, "419 at the Palms. Sara, you're with me."
At least, in the future, she'd be able to better identify with women who killed men they'd once loved.
They worked in complete silence. Her cold-shoulder, though justified, caused an ache in the center of his chest like he'd never felt before. Still, even when they didn't speak, they never missed a beat. Apparently he hadn't succeeded in severing every connection they shared.
If pressed on the issue, he would have insisted that he arranged the assignments the way he had in order to avoid arousing suspicion in their teammates that there was friction between them. But it wouldn't have been the whole truth and nothing but. His real reasons were grounded in his own selfish need to be around her. He could push her away and make her hate him, but at the end of the day nothing could weaken his own feelings. Especially now that he knew her on a whole different level, one of infinite intimacy. Removing the mystery had done nothing to diminish the attraction.
With nimble fingers, Sara gently twirled her fingerprint brush over a glass coffee table. He didn't realize he was staring until David asked, "Are you ready for us to take him?"
Grissom blinked and focused on the young coroner. "Yeah. Yes. Go ahead."
When they were alone again, the silence became overwhelming. Even for him. "How are you doing over there?" he asked, shattering the icy quiet.
"It's a hotel," Sara replied monotonously.
He was desperate to keep what conversation there was going. "And that means…what?"
"I count thirty prints." She separated a tape lift and slapped it against the clear surface. "So far."
"The tourism board says that our hotels are getting cleaner every year, but no one's asking us for our statistics, are they?"
He might as well have been speaking to a wall. Five minutes later, he tried again.
"I have a blond hair and a brown hair and our vic was a red-head. What do you think? More questionable cleanliness? Or 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas'?"
It took her a moment to reply. "My first year here, we were at a scene together and you didn't speak for three hours straight. I clocked you." Sara lifted her print and sealed it up. "At the time, it was the worst night of my life." She stood. "Now…it's not looking so bad."
"Where are you going?" he asked as she headed for the door with her kit.
She turned to face him. "I'm going with the body. Maybe you've convinced yourself that if you ignore the fact that we had sex two days ago, it somehow negates the act, but I'm not into denial. And I'm no masochist. I can't be here." She pulled off her gloves. "Have fun."
Grissom blinked. "You're expecting me to process the entire Real World suite on my own without missing anything?"
"On your own." Sara tipped her head to one side. "Isn't that how you like it?"
She left him with twenty-nine unlifted prints and enough guilt to drown in.
"All of this leads me to believe that I have to leave the hotel behind and find an apartment." Matt finished his story about the maid he caught going through his drawers and took a sip of coffee. "What do you think?"
Sara cut a strawberry in half with the edge of her spoon. "I think…that's pretty permanent."
They'd been meeting after her shift for breakfast for a week, but this was the first time the conversation had turned back to their undefined relationship.
"Would permanence be a bad thing?" he asked. "We are dating."
She swallowed the fruit, but tasted nothing. "Technically we won't be dating until tomorrow night. And even then we'll be having dinner with my three friends and their dates."
"Not exactly a picnic in Golden Gate Park at sunset."
Their eyes met in the middle of a memory. "No. Not quite." She glanced away.
Matt set down his cup and reached across the table for her hand. "Where are you these days, Sara? I look at you and it's like…I don't know. You won't let me connect."
Sara slipped her hand out from under his on the pretense of rubbing the back of her neck. "I keep having that same dream," she confessed. "The doors and the stairs. I try to make myself go through the door that leads into the bedroom. But I never do. I just take the closed door. And wind up with more stairs."
"All of a sudden I'm wishing I'd paid more attention in psychology class," he smiled.
"I'm not even sure I want to know what it means." She pushed her fruit bowl away. "What if dreams about stairs indicate seriously deviated personality flaws?"
Matt shrugged. "I like my women bad."
Sara rested her chin in her hand and studied him from across the table. He smiled under her scrutiny, and she decided it was time. "I need to tell you something."
"You have a tattoo? Wait, I already knew that one."
"I…" The words stuck in her throat at the last minute. He deserved to know what had happened between her and Grissom. He deserved to come into the second act of their relationship without the risk of stumbling over her baggage. Yet…she couldn't do it. Her one night with Grissom was a secret she'd keep, not for him, but for herself.
She needed it to be sacred. Or else it had just been a one night stand.
"When you start apartment searching, try Summerlin," Sara said after clearing her throat. "You'll spend some money, but it's worth it to avoid the tourists."
"How often do you find yourself called out to Summerlin?" Matt's eyes twinkled. "I need to look at this from all angles and that includes crime rate. You never know. Some day I might look to raise a family there."
Her strawberries weren't settling well. "You never know."
Grissom ate breakfast standing up in his kitchen. Instant oatmeal. He hadn't been able to stomach bran cereal since the morning she'd invited herself over and changed everything. When he was done, he rinsed out his bowl, set it in the half-full dishwasher and headed for the bathroom.
He emerged a few minutes later, washed, but feeling no cleaner.
When he reached into his drawer, his fingers touched plastic, buried in the middle of a stack of t-shirts. Right where he'd left it. Grissom hesitated before lifting it out.
She'd been in justifiable hurry to leave, so it was understandable that she'd left something behind. He'd only discovered it when he went looking for his own garments, the ones she'd pulled off of him in the heat of the moment.
Something told him he should have washed it days ago and discreetly returned it to her. But maybe he really was just an old pervert. He'd slipped it into a freezer bag instead.
Grissom opened the bag, releasing the faint scent of her perfume. The bra was made of navy blue lace. Dark and delicate. Just like Sara.
He was a fool, he decided. In so many more ways than just one.
To Be Continued