Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful feedback;) I hope you keep enjoying the story. I know the angst is thick, but who doesn't love the angst every now and then?
Someone Else's Star
by Kristen Elizabeth
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state." - George Eliot
"With the authority invested in me by the great state of Nevada, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your lovely bride."
The new husband did just that, dipping her low and planting one smack on her lips, much to the delight and applause of the chapel's other patrons.
In the back of the room, Matt turned to Sara. "I promise not to do that when it's our turn."
"Good. Thanks." She looked down at the papers she held; her palms were sweaty all of a sudden. Afraid to smudge the ink, Sara handed him the incomplete marriage license. "Here."
He took it and read it over, a small smile on his face. "Gotta love Vegas. All of this and a steak buffet, too."
The mention of meat turned her already queasy stomach. Sara tucked her damp palms under her arms as the next couple approached the notary public who served as the chapel's official. No pretenses of love or spirituality here. Marriage on the Strip was a business arrangement. If you had the money and the inclination and opposing genitalia, you could enter into a binding, legal contract and be back at work by the end of your lunch break. She appreciated the raw simplicity.
Matt nudged her with his elbow. "You know, if this isn't what you want, we can leave right now. I realize all of this isn't exactly the stuff of childhood dreams."
"True," she said. "And you're not Rick Springfield." When he frowned, she went on, "That's who I was supposed to marry. On the beach. In the dress Sandy wore to the dance in Grease."
His eyes twinkled. "It always comes back to Olivia."
Sara looked down at her black work pants and a V-neck black shirt. Well, she shouldn't be wearing virgin white, anyways.
The second couple in under twenty minutes was pronounced husband and wife, and another round of applause lit up the room. Sara glanced at Matt. "Are you having second thoughts?"
"I've never had second thoughts about you, Sara."
She knew. But she also knew that, more than any deep feelings in her heart, was the reason they were there.
"Would the Sidle-Wilson party please come to the altar," one of the chapel's attendants asked over the loudspeaker.
"This is your last chance to have Rick," Matt said softly.
Sara's tongue darted out to wet her dry lips. "He hasn't aged very well."
"Last call for Sidle-Wilson."
She wiped her hand on her knee and slipped it into his. Matt lifted the back of her knuckles up for a kiss. "Lucky me," he whispered. "I got Jesse's girl."
"Hey, Gris. You got a minute?"
Even as the words came out of his mouth, Nick was already lowering himself into one of the chairs in front of his boss's desk. Grissom sighed and closed up the final report on the bugs from his body in the mountains. "What's on your mind, Nick?"
One of the things he appreciated about the CSI's around whom he'd surrounded himself was their straightforward approach to difficult topics. Nick was no different; he rarely hemmed and never hawed. But he was certainly the most understated and polite of the team members. Maybe it was a Southern thing.
So Grissom was fairly surprised when Nick, with a distinct glower on his face, said, "That ex of Sara's. I don't like him."
Join the club, Grissom was tempted to say. But in a rare display of diplomacy, he simply inclined his head. "What is it about him that bothers you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact that he planned to take out a 250,000 dollar insurance policy on Sara six years ago?"
His calm exterior slipped a notch. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me right. Would've been effective the moment she said 'I do.' And if anything happened to her from then on, he would have gotten a quarter mil." Nick glowered. "That's not chump change."
Grissom agreed. But at the same time, 250,000 dollars was an insulting figure to attach to Sara's life. There was no monetary figure high enough to even begin to calculate her worth.
"Husbands and wives do it all the time," he told Nick.
"Yeah. And how many times have we busted someone for killing their husband or wife to get their hands on the money a little earlier than nature intended?"
He couldn't argue with that either. In fact, the very idea in relation to Sara made his blood run cold. Grissom found himself clinging to the one thing that had never let him down or led him astray.
"Do you have any evidence that his intentions are less than honorable?" When Nick said nothing, he sighed. "No, then."
Nick stared at him for a moment. "You're taking this a whole hell of a lot better than I thought you would. I really figured you'd…care a little more."
"You think I don't care?"
"I think I've seen you get more emotional when someone forgets to refill the coffee pot."
Grissom frowned. "What do you want me to do, Nick?"
The look he received from the younger man was pointed. "Talk to her. She deserves to know about all of this. Especially if she's thinking about getting back together with him."
"Do you think she is?" Grissom's question was spoken so softly that Nick had to strain to hear it at all.
After a moment's pause, Nick inclined his head. "They seem pretty close."
Grissom accepted the salt that poured onto his open wounds. "So…not only do you want me to ruin her future happiness, you want me to force her to question her entire past with this man." He shook his head. "I won't do it."
"But…"
Grissom cut him off. "Don't ask me again. I have limits to just how heartless I can be and still live with myself."
Silence stretched between them. Finally, Nick spoke. "Why didn't you tell her that you love her years ago?"
"Did you need anything else?"
The younger man shook his head. "No." He stood up. "Guess I'll be taking care of this myself."
Before he left, Grissom called out, "She deserves to be happy, Nick." There was a lump in his throat as he went on, "But if you find something…"
Nick still had too much respect for his boss to let him beg for anything. "I won't let anything happen to her. I promise."
Grissom released a breath when Nick was gone. If he wanted any sort of friendship with Sara, he would have to accept her blossoming relationship with Matt Wilson.
But if Matt Wilson had any nefarious objectives where Sara was concerned, he would kill the man with his bare hands and sleep well that night.
Conrad Ecklie liked to think of himself as a people person. It sounded good for when his name was volleyed around important circles. Unfortunately, being a people person meant occasionally being forced to interact with people he didn't like very much. When his secretary informed him that CSI Sidle was waiting to speak to him just before the swing shift came on duty, it took a lot of willpower to keep from telling the woman to blow off Grissom's pet.
With gritted teeth, he said, "Send her in, Myra."
What was it about Sara Sidle, besides her complete lack of respect for his authority, that irked him so much? She was a decent criminalist with a solve record that demanded even his deference. She'd never done anything to publicly embarrass the lab. Her pathetically one-sided obsession with Grissom ensured that she didn't sleep around. She did max out on overtime every month, but that didn't make her unique on Grissom's shift of annoying overachievers.
Funny how everything kept coming back to Grissom.
She entered with her back straight, her chin level and her gait confident. Most people slunk into his office. If he'd liked her more, he would have been pleasantly surprised by her poise, even in the wake of their recent bad history.
"Have a seat, Sidle," he ordered, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk.
Sara accepted, lowering herself into a seat with fluid grace. The woman did have some damn long legs which she crossed casually. "Thanks for seeing me without an appointment," she began. There was a tinge of sarcasm in her words. "I hope you've had a chance to look over my request for a shift transfer."
He had, but he was torn between granting her request and doing some new damage to Grissom's team, or punishing her for past transgressions by making her stay right where she was. Even people persons could hold grudges.
"Yes, I have. But before I make a decision, I need to understand your reasons." He leaned back in his chair. "Are you having a problem with the graveyard shift, Sidle?"
Her face was expressionless. "I'm ready for a change."
"Have you spoken to Supervisor Grissom about this…need for change?"
She nodded slightly. "He supports my decision."
"Really?" Ecklie was understandably skeptical. Just about a year earlier, Grissom had stood before him and announced that he was willing to be fired in this woman's place rather than lose her. Maybe that crush of Sidle's wasn't entirely one sided… "It's been my impression that Gil considers you a valuable member of his team. For some reason."
"I'd be just as valuable to the swing or day shifts."
He smiled with what he considered great patience. "I'll certainly be taking this into consideration when I make my final decision." There was a pause. "Was that all you needed to discuss?"
For the first time since she'd walked in, Sara's mask of composure slipped a bit. "Actually, no. I'd also like to put in a request…for vacation time. Two weeks."
Ecklie sighed. "Sidle, I know you don't take much time off, but even you should know that vacation requests go through your supervisor. Put it in writing and let Gil deal with it."
Instead of getting up and leaving like anyone else would have, Sara remained seated. "I realize this goes against protocol. But I'd appreciate it if you'd make an exception this time."
"Why?" He crossed his arms. "And it had better be good."
She looked down at her hands and he noticed a flash of gold on her left ring finger that had definitely never been there before.
It wasn't a lot of ammo, but it was definitely worth something in the on-going war he was silently waging against the graveyard shift's supervisor.
Ten minutes later, he called Myra into his office. There was one sure-fire way to spread inside information around the lab, and it lay in his secretary's inability to keep her mouth shut. "CSI Sidle will be taking off two weeks for her honeymoon starting on Monday. She'd prefer to keep this under wraps, Myra, so in your memo to Supervisor Grissom, just tell him she'll be out on personal time."
He figured Grissom would find out his favorite CSI was a newlywed by the end of his shift that night. At the very latest.
Whoever was pounding on his door at six in the morning was just asking for it. As Brass rolled out of the bed he'd only rolled into an hour earlier, and pulled on a robe, his sleepy mind contemplated what "it" might be. By the time he reached the door, he hadn't settled on any punishment quite horrible enough for the person who was still slamming their fist against his door.
He ripped the chain out of its slide, flipped the deadbolt and yanked the door open, prepared to release his fury. But what he saw took the very wind out of his sails.
"Gil?"
The man on his doorstep looked up at the sound of his name, but his red-rimmed eyes focused on nothing. Brass knew this look. He just never would have thought to attach it to his perpetually cool, calm and collected friend.
But when Grissom spoke, his breath told the story of his last few hours. Whiskey, Brass figured. And a lot of it. He was barely standing on his own; in fact, without the support of the door's frame, he'd have been on the ground.
It was a sad, sad sight.
"I lost her, Jim."
He didn't need to ask who. The rumor of Sara's quickie marriage had already reached PD. Brass sighed. He reached out and grabbed Grissom's limp arm. Throwing it around his shoulder, he half-dragged the man into the house.
"She's his now," Grissom went on, every word slurred with alcohol and anguish. "She's his. Not mine. I lost her…I made her go away."
Brass let him fall onto the couch. He landed face down. "Ah, hell." With another sigh, he jerked him upright. Grissom slumped down into the cushions. "I'll make coffee."
He used double the amount of coffee when he set the pot up. Even from the kitchen, he could hear his inebriated guest going on. "I love her…couldn't let her love me." Brass came back into the living room. "She's so damn pretty…too good…too young. Deserves better, you know."
"You'll never remember this, so I'm gonna ask something I've been wondering about for a long time." He paused. "What the good god-damn hell is wrong with you, Gil?"
Shaking his head, all Grissom could moan was, "Sara…"
After forcing two cups of coffee into his friend, Brass put an empty trashcan next to the couch and left him to sleep it off.
Maybe it was a good thing that by marrying someone else, Sara had broken whatever destructive rut they'd gotten themselves into, before they turned each other into complete alcoholics.
To Be Continued