Sara walked the perimeter of the house, looking for evidence; a tire track, a footprint, a cigarette, maybe. She sighed, squatting to pick up a small white button she found among a pile of loose soil. It bitter-sweet for her; her first case with Grissom since…well, yeah….and it just had to be a rape case.
What's worse, the part where you get raped and beaten, or the part where you die? She always wondered.
She hated rape cases. Her father had abused her when she was young. She hadn't been raped or anything but he'd beaten her, much like many of the women involved in rape cases. It was a horrible feeling. At night, especially after such cases, she could imagine what they had gone through.
She could see what they saw, feel what they felt. The terror that must have run through them like the ocean through a straw...She had terrible nightmares some days, and she'd often wake up in her cold, empty apartment, wishing deperately that she didn't have to endure the after-effects of her job alone.
"You want to sleep with me?" Sara remembered asking him. Then the bewildered look she'd gotten back from Grissom.
"Did you just say what I think you said?" He'd responded in shock. She'd meant to be cynical, but it had turned out that he missed that.
"That way when I wake in a cold sweat up under the blankets hearing Kaye's screams, you can tell me that it's nothing. It's just empathy."
The memory faded from her as she shook her head, trying to get back into work mode. Walking back to the front, she ducked under police tape, nodding to Brass and Detective O'Riley. She then ascended the porch steps, the police cruiser's flashing lights slicing through the midnight air and illuminating her in red and blue flashes.
Walking through the door, she assessed the scene before her. With a trained eye, she swept the room, mentally taking snapshots of the broken lamp, the phone smashed all over the floor. The blood trail.
By the look of the way the drops were positioned, the killer had fled down the stairs and out the door. She followed the trail backwards up the stairs, careful not to contaminate any evidence. The blood directed her to a room on the left-hand side of a hallway. There, she found Grissom processing the scene.
And a scene it was. The girl lay on the bed, her arms tied crudely to her ankles, a pillow over her face. There was so much blood that Sara couldn't tell where exactly it had come from. Feeling the urge to run far away, she swallowed and gritted her teeth. It was time to nab this bad guy.
Too bad we couldn't do that before he killed her…
"Hey," She addressed Grissom, "Perimeter came up with zip except a button. From the killer's clothes maybe?" She theorized.
He acknowledged her with a nod of the head. She got to work, surveying the room, looking for bits of trace evidence that could be used. Grissom, who was photographing, looked up so see her squatted down, carefully dusting the nightstand. For a second, he stood in awe of her; her beauty, grace and intelligence.
God, she is beautiful, he thought to himself as she lifted a gun out of the nightstand, handling the weapon with an odd sort of elegance. He just stood there, wondering how she could make something so violent seem so passive and simple.
When Sara looked up a moment later, Grissom was busy photographing the rope that was binding the girl's hands and feet.
"I got a gun," She said, watching Grissom's head snap up from the camera. Like he hadn't already known. He nodded.
"Bag it."
She obeyed, and after a few minutes of quietly processing together, Grissom signaled with a wave of his hand to come to him. He stood next to the bed and leaned over the body. Sara was right next to him, so close that their shoulders touched. There was not much need for such close personal contact, but it was always like that with them. They always stood like that, close physically, as if it would somehow lead to emotionalland spiritually.
"What do you make of this?" Grissom asked, pointing out a mark on the girl's stomach, nearly invisible because of all the blood. It was a cross, apparently a tattoo of some sort, she thought. His gloved finger reached out and dabbed at it lightly, coming away covered with red blood and black.
Not a tattoo…She thought.
"What is it?" She asked. He lifted his hand to his nose to smell it.
"Permanent marker, is my guess." He said. Just then, Sara noticed the familiar metallic blue peeking out from under his sleeve…he was wearing the watch. The watch. Her somewhat-cheesy gift to him to perhaps jump-start him into action. Apparently it had at least had an affect on him.
Grissom's eyes caught hers staring at his wrist.
"It's nice, isn't it?" He said quietly, with a flick of his chin and a small smile. She nodded.
"A friend gave it to me…" Grissom said. A friend? Sara was getting confused. Is that all they were now? Friends? She quirked an inquisitive eyebrow at him, goading him to explain.
"And I need your advice. This friend…I've known her for a long time and I've been a jerk pretty much the whole time," He said, reaching down to bag and tag a black fibre on the bedsheet.
"And I think…I think I want to be more than friends. It's taken me way to long to realize that because I was so caught up in being a jerk," he explained, bending down to put the little white envelope housing the fibre into his kit.
He stood up to full height, standing close to Sara. They stood facing each other, each staring at the other in such a way that if Ecklie were to come in right then, the situation would look entirely inappropriate. Not saying anything for a moment, Grissom peeled off his gloves and bit the inside of his lip.
"Do you think she'll forgive me?" He asked quietly, his deep blue eyes set intently on hers. She broke his gaze to look at the floor. Her eyes then flicked up to his.
"Depends how long you've felt this way about her."
Just then, they were interrupted by a voice from the hall, calling Grissom. They moved apart a few inches just as David walked in.
"I'm ready to take the body, if you're done here," He said.
Grissom just nodded. Picking up his kit, he moved toward the door, Sara following him. She didn't know whether he would answer or not. Together, they exited the first floor apartment. Grissom didn't reply to her until they were out of the earshot of the other police guys on the case. They stood out in the parking lot together, beside the Crime Lab Denali.
"I always felt like this," Grissom said, lifting her case from her and putting it in the back of the Denali. He turned and sat on the edge of the open trunk, just looking at her standing there.
"I was infatuated with her when I first saw her—her smile, her eyes, her skin…"
Sara felt her stomach do flips as he confessed to her. Suddenly everything she had admired about her supervisor came back to her, hitting her hard like an eighteen-wheeler on a highway.
The way he moved with that graceful gait, the way he spoke in that sexy deep voice, the way he would stare at you as if he could read your mind…it was in his chiseled face, his gorgeous lips, his sparkling eyes, his beautiful graying curls…
"And I thought that that was it -- infatuation," Grissom said as Sara took a seat beside him on the floor of the SUV, "But since then I've figured otherwise…"
"I think if she's waited around this long for you you'd better tell her," She replied quietly. One of his big, warm hands reached out to caress her cheek. He smiled, one half of his pouting lips turning up at the corner.
"Who said she's been waiting for me?" He asked.
"No one. She just always has."
Then his lips closed in over hers and she was lost in the total ecstasy of the moment. This kiss was better than the first—last time he'd kissed her hesitantly and quickly, just out of not knowing what to do. This time, his kissed her with confidence, long and slow.
And the best thing about them being together like this was that for one fleeting moment, the horrific reality of the scene that they had just processed didn't seem so harsh. Thier jobs were filled with hard, cold, evil violence, and each could find consolment in the other...shame they had to wait seven years to finally come to thier senses...
a/n: you guys have no idea whats gonna happen! heheh. i have a good outline for the next chapter...please review!
