Title: Journey of the Lonely Whale: All at Sea (Part 2: Whales in the Night)
Author: Lisa (ff: ljkwriting4life / twitter: lisa_james_85)
Rating: PG. This story contains adult themes.
Summary: A pleasant afternoon on the boat gets a little rough, and Gil contemplates the universe.
Notes: All at Sea is a four-part series of complementary stand-alone stories set between Immortality and CSI: Vegas. It is fourth in the JOTLW series and broadly follows Day One, Day Five, and Evolution (Month 12).
PART TWO: WHALES IN THE NIGHT
Gil admired the pair of long, slender legs that he could see stretched out from Sara's chair on the deck of the Ishmael, extending from her navy shorts all the way to the raised metal railing on the portside. She was reclined back in one of their two comfortable deck chairs that she had parked on the deck precisely where she wanted it. Her wide-brimmed hat was pulled tightly onto her head. Strands of curly brown hair buoyed by the salt air rustled around her shoulders and her maroon-coloured shirt in the breeze. A royal blue lapis lazuli anklet sparkled in the last of the day's sun as Sara balanced the balls of her bare feet on the railing.
The day had been warm and bright and the water calm. The Ishmael bobbed in the ocean, sitting off the coast of Baja California but a long way from land.
Sometimes Gil just liked to look at her. She was sleek and stunning. There were only so many things to look at on the boat and Sara spent just as much time staring at him some days, so she didn't mind. This time she didn't even seem to notice, though he imagined she could feel his eyes on her. In any case, he let her be. That was the position she took up when she wanted some personal time to read or write or think. Sometimes she put her earphones in and listened to music. Her back was to Gil as he travelled in and out of the cabin below deck and up to the cockpit and back again, doing some navigational work but mostly pottering. They were between research projects and were taking some much-needed respite from research to relax. Sara was playing with her new toy.
The controls for the high-spec drone were balanced on her lap and in both hands and her cell phone was attached to the unit so she could stream a feed of the drone's camera and direct it to take photos and video as desired. The drone itself was up in the sky some distance away. Usually for birthdays and at Christmas they gave each other relatively simple, inexpensive presents that they could use on the boat. They tried to personalise the moments but ultimately they needed to be practical. This was certainly something practical that they could use, and Sara herself had suggested them getting a drone a year ago. Gil had filed her wish away for later and had bought it in the US the last time Sara was in San Diego for her time at the crime lab. The box had been stupidly hard to hide from Sara on the boat for months, but he had wanted to at least try to surprise her, and somehow he had managed it, even if he had spent every day worried she was going to inadvertently find it.
Maybe she had found it but had just chosen to forget, he realised. That would be a lot like Sara, she wouldn't want to ruin the surprise for Gil either, but she had seemed sincerely pleased.
It was a big gift, for a big birthday, but it was proving to be worth every cent. Sara was in love with it, and Gil was glad it was being used first and foremost for recreation and not research; it couldn't always be about the jellyfish. He thought Sara was on the hunt for something much larger.
"Anything?" he asked when he passed her again, unable to help his curiosity.
"Mm, no but it is proving to be meditative," she said. She looked over her shoulder and smiled, with her sunglasses reflecting the afternoon sun. "If you grab my tablet, I already put the app on it yesterday, and I think I can link it and you'll be able to watch as well."
"You sure?" he asked, not wanting to interrupt, but her casual smile was broad and happy.
"Yeah, of course, pull up a chair!"
Gil grinned. It was her toy, but his curiosity had been getting the better of him. Sara chuckled as he hurried back into the cabin to collect her tablet. By the time he returned, Sara had set up his own chair right next to hers, and she talked him through the instructions to connect the devices.
"Got it," Gil said when he got a tick to say he was connected to the network.
"This is going to be so good for our research," she said.
"It's for you, not work," he insisted gently.
"I know, I know," she said under her breath as she concentrated on moving the drone. She was still getting comfortable with the controls and they were both paranoid it was going to drop from the sky. Sara looked out over the horizon and spotted it to help her as she manoeuvred the device, and Gil watched the picture on the tablet's screen. He realised Sara had not necessarily been sitting in her corner out of any real desire to be on her own, but rather had positioned herself to capture enough shade on the screen to combat the glare. He could see the picture perfectly.
"Honey this is incredible," he said, marvelling at the quality of the video as Sara directed the drone slowly back towards them, monitoring its speed and height from the water.
"Isn't it," she agreed. "Gil, it's outstanding."
"We need to find some dolphins," he declared. "Orca."
"Yes, and we need to find some whales too," she insisted. "Animals we would never be able to get this close to. Pods that we've only ever seen from a distance. Now we can watch them swim and breach from above. We can record video and take photographs, or just sit and watch them."
"If you're using this and you see anything like that you have to call me over," Gil said. "I don't care what else I'm doing at the time. Unless I'm busy saving our lives, assume I want to be interrupted."
"Oh, don't worry Gil. At this point if I saw a goldfish pop its little fin up I would call you over."
He laughed happily and nodded.
"Can you pull it over the boat?" he asked.
"Sure," Sara said. She smirked. "That's kind of how I get it back," she added, teasing him.
Gil sat back and looked up, watching as the drone flew toward them. Sara raised it and held it hovering over the boat, and Gil looked down at the screen. It was a perfect overhead image of the boat sitting in the middle of the blue ocean, with the two of them in one corner in their chairs.
"Wow," he said.
"And now see, if I do this," Sara said as she gestured and indicated he should watch the device in her own hands. "I can take a picture, like…there we go, and it saves to my phone and then the phone will back it up onto our cloud." She stood and turned to watch the drone as she guided it back down onto the deck at her feet and switched it off. "That was a good twenty-five minutes," Sara said. "It just gave me a warning so I think thirty minutes is accurate, at least while it's new."
"Good," Gil said. He moved to stand up when Sara leant over to pick the drone up, but she shook her head and smiled. Gil eased himself curiously back into his chair but turned to watch her.
"Sit, relax. I'll get us some cheese and crackers. Here's as good a place as any, right?"
"Sure, but-"
"Just rest, Gil, you've been bouncing around all day," she said. She disappeared into the cabin with the drone and controls, and Gil shrugged and put the tablet she had left behind on her seat. He sat comfortably in the chair and watched the horizon, and the gentle movement of the dark blue ocean as it trailed off to meet nothing more than the lighter blue sky above it. The wind had picked up in the past few minutes, but it often did at that time of the afternoon, there were white caps on the water in the distance. Gil sighed and cleared his mind. He waited for Sara to return.
Sara handed Gil the plate of cheese and crackers. She had added some sundried tomatoes. Once Gil accepted the plate from over his shoulder, Sara remained behind him and smoothed her hands along both of his shoulders, over the top of his simple cotton shirt. She massaged the sides of his neck with strong, purposeful thumbs a few times and then focused slowly on the shoulders themselves. She smiled at the sight of goosebumps rising on his smooth, tanned skin as her cool fingers edged underneath the collar of his shirt. She was stretching the collar, but Gil wouldn't care.
Gil was usually the one doing this for her, and it felt nice to return the favour. He had been oddly wound up for the past few days, and she wondered if it had anything to do with her birthday, or whether it was something else. He was having a hard time relaxing since they had wrapped up the last research project, but the break had been his idea and Sara agreed it was necessary. The jellyfish would survive. In fact, jellyfish would probably outlive humanity, so she wasn't too worried.
"Are you going to join me, sweetheart?" Gil quipped.
Sara took her hands out of his shirt and rested them on his shoulders on top of the fabric.
"What are you talking about? I'm right here. Hand me a cracker with the lot." She reached over his shoulder to accept a cracker with a thin square of cheese and an oily, shrivelled, tasty slice of tomato. She popped it in her mouth while her left hand continued to lightly rub back and forth around Gil's left shoulder and collarbone and upper back, and her right hand joined its partner again.
She soon found a spot on his neck that had obviously been causing him an issue because when she dug into it with her thumb he groaned and jerked his head to one side. Maybe this was the source of all his weird tension, she thought. She softened her touch so as not to hurt him, but once he relaxed she went back over it again more firmly. This time he sat quietly and took a deep breath.
They stretched often, but it was easy for small knots to build up when they were on the boat day-in, day-out, and Sara stretched far more than Gil.
He had the most amazing skin though. Sara did not mind spending extra time on his knots. Whenever she touched his skin it was so smooth, she could not believe that his body was sixty-five years old. His soul, of course, was in some ways much older, yet also in some ways much younger. He had a little more sun damage around his neck these days thanks to their life on the Ishmael, but it was nothing compared to her own skin, which was freckled and more easily burnt. She was good about keeping the sun off her before four o'clock every afternoon, but it was inevitable on the boat that at times she would fail miserably. Gil didn't seem to mind, given the way he was always kissing and touching her arms and legs. He never made her feel self-conscious about her skin or her body.
Gil reached his left hand back over his shoulder. He rested it on Sara's hand that was still rubbing his neck, and he held her still. His thumb brushed her wrist tenderly and she shivered.
"All right?" Sara asked. Her right hand softened too. Sometimes she was too strong.
"Oh honey," Gil said in a deep voice, and he appeared to have melted into his chair.
Sara grinned. Perfect, she assured herself happily. She returned to her seat and after moving her tablet to her side she collapsed into the chair, feeling satisfied and physically exhausted as she reached for another cracker that Gil had prepared for her. Their arms rested side by side along the middle of their near-as-joined deck chairs, and Sara cast a sideways glance at him and smiled.
"Some days," she began after a moment. "I don't know how it could get any better, and I feel very lucky. Do you ever feel like that?"
"Constantly," he assured her. "And we haven't even seen any whale calves with the drone yet." He covered her wrist with his hand and Sara adjusted her arm so his hand slid down into hers. The sun was on its way down, but rather than staring directly into the west when the sun was still high enough to blind them, they enjoyed watching the colour of the sky slowly change in the east.
"Did you come up with any ideas earlier?" she asked, referring to the time he had spent perusing the maps that afternoon. They had no real plans for the next month, no set destination they needed to reach before a certain time. They were making their way south at a lazy pace, but they did need to stop somewhere soon to pump the sewerage tank and re-stock some essentials.
"I was thinking about La Paz," Gil said. "In Baja, not Bolivia."
Sara laughed easily.
"Thanks for clarifying, darling," she said. "La Paz in Bolivia being the highest capital above sea level in the world, I was wondering where we would park the boat."
Gil laughed with her and nodded.
They had been to La Paz in Mexico before, and it was a great city on the Baja peninsula. Good food, good people, and the promise of a relatively inexpensive hotel room for a week if they could get the boat into the marina. Sara liked the Museo de Arte by the central park and cathedral.
"I have nice memories from there with you," she said. She smiled as Gil held her hand and rubbed her sensitive skin with his thumb. Her hands were cold thanks to the sudden drop in temperature, but Gil's hands always seemed to be warm. She sighed when a gust of wind swept her hair around her shoulders with greater urgency. "Okay, I don't like the feeling of that wind on my neck," she stated. "What is going on this afternoon?"
Sara looked over her shoulder to the west, but the sky was clear there too, there were no clouds, there was no sign of any storms. It had been a beautiful, calm day. Still, she shivered again.
"Mm, I'll check the weather and we might set a slow heading," Gil said thoughtfully as he looked seriously at the water. He hesitated. "The other option was Hawaii," he said, but Sara frowned and shook her head. She took the plate of cheese and crackers and ate the last one.
"No," she said. She liked when they made firm, fast decisions, and La Paz was closer. "We need to pump the tank, we're on borrowed time with that already, and I wouldn't mind getting into a hotel, having a long shower or a bath, and wandering around the markets and local streets, and the food, Gil. The food, I could eat for days!"
"Oh, I remember," he assured her with a chuckle. He pushed himself to his feet and Sara did the same. She tucked her tablet and the empty plate into her armpit and held them firmly in place with her arm as she and Gil folded up their chairs. She laughed at her miserable efforts to fold her own chair while one of her arms was impeded. Gil helped her, and he quickly took both chairs and stored them securely. The ocean was certainly less calm than it had been just an hour ago, and that happened sometimes when the wind picked up in the evenings and worsened into the night. The wind could be just as bad under clear skies as it could be in the middle of a wild ocean storm.
It wasn't often anything to worry about and they could motor ahead until it died down, often in the early hours of the morning, but Sara and Gil went through their usual routine of making sure they wouldn't lose anything from the deck in the night if they started really rolling on top of the waves.
"Can you do the cabin," Gil said. "You should put something warmer on, your hand was freezing."
Sara didn't need to be told; she was freezing now that the sun had mostly dipped below the horizon, leaving the sky a dusky pinkish blue.
"Do you want anything, love?" she asked as Gil passed her on the way up to the cockpit.
"Uh, my fleece, maybe," he said. "Thanks."
Sara nodded. She disappeared into the cabin and put her tablet into bedside storage. She did a quick scan of their living area. She closed and locked the porthole above the bed, and she latched the cupboards and drawers they had lazily left unlatched, as they often did during long stretches of calm weather when the small boat seemed like any other studio apartment with a rooftop terrace. They hadn't eaten dinner but they could always re-open drawers and doors. The rule was, as a starting point, everything was secure. The last thing they wanted was to have cups and plates and knives flying across the cabin, especially if they were in the middle of making serious decisions in the middle of the night. At that point, Sara was usually just trying not to vomit.
She changed into her long, outdoorsy pants, a long-sleeved top and her own fleece jumper, and she raked her hair back into a tangled bun at the back of her head. Then she found Gil's usual fleece and left the cabin. She was glad it wasn't raining. The Ishmael was tilting in the wind and the growing waves as she climbed the ladder to the cockpit, but they had found themselves in worse conditions. Gil had started the engine and they were moving. He knew what he was doing, and Sara also knew what he was doing and why. She had to know it, she knew everything, in case he was ever incapacitated and she needed to get them – or even just herself – out of a dire situation on her own.
It was terrible to have to think about, but they regularly had frank conversations about how to manage a variety of awful scenarios at sea, from one of them falling overboard in a storm, to accidentally cutting a fingertip off, to a cardiac arrest, or a fire on board. There was a clear and specific plan for each scenario that at least could act as an anchor when panic might otherwise threaten their ability to make sound and possibly lifesaving decisions alone. They had a full first aid kit, a variety of medication, fire-fighting equipment, and on top of the boat's EPIRB, personal emergency beacons. They had harnesses and life vests and a raft, and they even had a defibrillator.
Gil had never had anything like that when it had just been him alone on the Ishmael for all those years after their divorce, but as soon as Sara joined him and he realised that she might be the one having a heart attack one day, he bought one. Sara didn't mind, if that was what it took for Gil to admit they might need it. Thankfully they had never used anything more than their stock of standard painkillers and band-aids, and Sara never wanted to use anything more serious than that, but she would if it came down to it, and she knew Gil would do the same for her or anyone else in distress.
Sara smiled at the sight of his steady hands on the instruments as he looked straight ahead.
"Thank you," he said when she entered the cockpit and handed him his jumper. She shut the small gate behind her and stood close to him. Once he had his jumper on and zipped up, she rested her hand on his back beneath the jumper, warming her fingers against his shirt and the soft fleece.
The wind blew against their faces but they kept their footing as the boat lifted up and down over the unsettled ocean. Sara let go of Gil's back only to shove her hand into the pocket of her jumper, where she found a small tube of lip balm. She used it and handed it to Gil for his own lips.
"Ooh, honey-vanilla. No strawberry today?" he joked when he read the label.
"Oh, stop it," she said with a laugh. "You want me to kiss you later? Put it on." Their faces would be red and dry by the time they got out of this gale. Gil complied and Sara returned the balm to her pocket. She had little things like that stashed in all her clothes' pockets, and around the boat.
"How's it looking?" she asked. She returned her hand to Gil's back while her other hand remained braced against the railing for balance.
"Clear skies, no rain, but the wind's changed on us, darlin'."
"Yeah, I felt it," she mumbled with an expressive look that made him laugh. "Rough night?"
"Maybe, I hope not," he said. "Could just be a blip. Maybe a late night until we're through the worst of it." He glanced at her apologetically but Sara just smiled and shrugged. They'd had a good run of pleasant weather and this was always the payoff.
Gil woke up in the early hours of the morning and realised Sara was not beside him. Usually it was hard for her to get up and out of bed without waking him up given how the bed was tucked in against the portside of the boat, but he felt like he had been deeply asleep for a few hours. When he touched Sara's pillow and the sheets beside him they felt cool and a little damp. She had been up for some time already. He sat up and ran his hand through his hair as he blinked away the last of sleep. A quick check of his watch told him it was nearing three-thirty, and that felt about right.
The boat was still rocking across the surface of the water, more-so than on calmer nights, but nowhere near as badly as it had been the previous evening and at other times. Gil wasn't worried, in fact he was reassured to have slept so long without being disturbed. They had gotten to a point during the night where Sara had felt comfortable going to lie down below deck, she'd had enough, and an hour later Gil had joined her. She had still only been half-asleep, but she had gone to sleep in his arms, which he loved. They would be tired that day but if they set a path for La Paz then hopefully they could take turns napping while the other person kept an eye on their surrounds.
Just as Sara was doing now, he thought.
Sara was perfectly capable of being up in the cockpit on her own and she would wake him up if there was ever a problem, but his alarm was going to go off shortly anyway, and he was up.
Gil skipped the next alarm, then stood and put his beanie and warm coat on. He slipped his sock-covered feet into his shoes and found one of Sara's wraps, or maybe it was just a large scarf she sometimes used as a small blanket. He also found her reusable water bottle and filled it up, and he made his way onto the deck and then up the ladder to the cockpit.
Sara was indeed sitting up there, stretched out on the seat on the inside of the gate, in only her light, summery pyjamas she had felt safe enough to change into before getting into bed. Her bare legs were extended along the seat and crossed at the ankle as one of her arms lay casually along the top of the gate. Her dark blue anklet glittered and looked as black as the sea beneath the lights of the stars and cockpit. Sara's long, wavy hair was blowing around her face as the boat slowly motored ahead into the wind. She heard him coming and they smiled when they saw each other.
"Working on your tan, beautiful?" Gil teased happily. He was pleased to see her smiling.
"Try and stop me," she teased in reply. "You found me."
"Surprise," he said with a laugh. He held himself at the top of the ladder and watched her. "Can I join you?"
"Of course," she said softly. She stood and helped him climb over the gate so they didn't need to bother with lifting the seats and opening the barrier.
Gil handed her the water bottle and as she drank he cast his eyes over her t-shirt and shorts, and that fantastic body. No shoes, no long pants or bra or jumper. She had simply gotten out of bed and come up to the cockpit. It wasn't exactly work-safe, but it was easy to become complacent when the boat was also their home and they were used to the up-and-down of the waves. And if she wasn't feeling well, then he understood the sense of urgency that might have overwhelmed her.
"Here," he said when she caught him staring and smirked. He also handed her the wrap. "I figured you'd be…"
"Hanging out in my pyjamas under the stars?" she asked. "Yeah." She gestured to the water and dark sky around them. "This is nothing I can't handle. You didn't have to get up."
"I just woke up," he simply said. They sat down and Sara sat in the same way she had before, only this time her calves and ankles rested across Gil's lap. He rubbed her legs and enjoyed raising the soft hairs he found there, and Sara sighed happily and closed her eyes. "Feeling sick?" he asked.
"No, just hot," she said.
"Sorry," Gil said, as he remembered pressing his body into hers as she slept and wrapping her up in his arms. Though, if he recalled, that sleeping body had wriggled its way into his arms too.
"You are a living incubator, Gil, but I like being in bed with you. No, I mean I was hot. I had a bad dream, I woke up in a sweat, overheated, and I couldn't stay there lying in those sheets but I'm okay. Up here…" She trailed off and gestured to the black sky filled with stars. "It's so beautiful."
"It is," Gil agreed. He smiled tenderly at the way her voice wobbled. They had sat on the boat in the middle of the night hundreds of times now, watching the same sky at every month of the year, and it was still enough to bring Sara to tears. Gil loved that, he loved that this boat and this adventure they were on made her feel. Sara had always felt deeply, but he knew she sometimes lost her grip on those feelings and convinced herself she felt nothing. It wasn't true, but it scared her. Being out here somehow let her keep her grip on it all. Gil was grateful for that. He was grateful to hold just a small part of all the beauty in the world. "Do you remember your dream?" he asked.
Sara sighed and shook her head.
"I did when I woke up, but it's gone now."
Good, Gil thought. He looked out at the night sky. It was easier to let things go when there was a whole ocean and a sky to pick them up and carry them away on the waves or in the wind. They remained at the mercy of the waves, but the wind wasn't cold the way it had felt the evening before. Sara didn't like any sudden icy wind on the back of her neck, so Gil wasn't surprised by the timing of her nightmare. He still had bad dreams too, but often they were not as specific as Sara's could be. What had happened to Sara in her life simply hadn't happened to him. He was only a witness.
"Are you all right, sweetheart?" Sara asked suddenly.
Gil glanced at her, surprised and unsure of the expression that might have been on his face. Then he realised he had gripped her legs, not in a way that would hurt her, just in an urgent sort of way that made sure she was close. He relaxed his hands, offered her a small smile, and nodded.
"I was just thinking about whales," he said.
It was a lie, but it was a believable lie.
"Ahuh," Sara said, her voice laced with scepticism. "What about them?"
"In many ways we have so many things in common with them, don't we? But isn't it strange that we've evolved to spend most of our waking lives positioned vertically on the land and we sleep horizontally, and whales spend most of their waking lives positioned horizontally in the water and often sleep vertically? I was just imagining them out there, bobbing upright, below the surface."
Sara laughed. It was a happy laugh directed purely at his silliness.
"I often wonder how strange we all might seem as creatures to someone looking down on the Earth," he continued.
"Oh God, very strange," Sara agreed. She gestured between them. "They would say, 'What are these two bipedal morons doing, alone on that primitive looking platform in the middle of an ocean, in the middle of the night?'"
"Ah, and to that I would answer, contemplating the mysteries of the universe," Gil said. He smiled. "And the softness of your skin."
Sara replied with a big, toothy smile. Her eyes looked as black as the jewellery around her ankle as they sparkled in the dark.
"Smooth, Gilbert," she said, teasing him with another laugh.
"Well, it is three-thirty in the morning and I'm rubbing your legs and they're a great source of distraction for me, give me some credit," he shot back quickly. He chuckled, and Sara picked up the wrap and unfurled it over her lap and her legs. Gil tucked it in around her calves over his lap but kept one hand underneath the thin fabric to keep hold of her. He rested his other more loosely over the top of her legs and ankles.
He loved these moments, the quiet nights they spent watching the stars. They could sit for an hour and say nothing, and it didn't matter what either of them was thinking about. It was better than any night they had spent in a home together, and in Las Vegas the stars were never like this. He tried to focus on them, but his attention kept being diverted by the sight of Sara's wild hair, blowing freely around her face and off her shoulders. She didn't try to pull it back, she seemed content to sit.
"It's calmer, I think," Sara said after a long period of silence.
Gil glanced at her curiously again, and she realised she only said part of her thought aloud.
"For the sleeping whales," she added. "There's a fierceness to the ocean for us some nights, but we're up here on the surface, and yet I'm sure beneath the surface it's calmer and they're sleeping peacefully."
"Sure," Gil agreed.
"Do you think that's like us?" Sara asked after another pause. "On the surface you're so calm and steady, but underneath you're this passionate and deep man that I'm not sure a lot of our old friends and colleagues ever really saw, and I'm the opposite, and all of my passion sits here on the surface like these waves, visible to everyone, but beneath the surface…I'm just a sleeping whale."
Gil bit his bottom lip and looked at the stars as he thought about what to say. This was the sort of random, meandering conversation they had in the early hours of the morning, it often meant very little, but there was a darkness to it this time that he knew had been put there by Sara's dream.
"I suppose that depends how you characterise 'just a sleeping whale'," he said. "Are you putting yourself down and casting aspersions on the poor whale who just needed a break, or are you referring to their admirable ability to sleep through storms and withstand the currents at rest, or go with the flow? Or their calm and nurturing nature, high intelligence, social skills, and lovely singing voice. Those things don't just disappear because they're sleeping. No sleeping whale is just a sleeping whale, and whales are passionate and deep creatures, Sara, like you. You know that."
Sara huffed a little and pressed her lips together in a thoughtful smile.
"Do you really think I'm passionate too?" he asked curiously.
Some days he didn't particularly feel it, and until he met Sara it wasn't something he was sure he had ever felt. At least not for another person. He had some so-called best friends growing up as a young boy, but Sara was right; most people he had met in his life had never really seen him. Gil had never let them know him. He had always been very passionate about science and insects though.
The incredible evolution of insects.
Most people, on the other hand? Eh.
But his wife wasn't most people. To him, she never had been. At first, his passion for Sara had terrified him. The thought of being with her and sharing so much of himself with her had felt like he was standing at the edge of a cliff blindfolded and about to be pushed into the crevasse below, but his feelings for her did not scare him anymore, and importantly, they had never scared Sara. When he was ready, she had opened her arms and her heart and her body and had welcomed him.
She was his home.
She just gave him a look in response to his self-indulgent question. It was the sort of amused and pointed look that asked Gil where he had been for the last twenty years she had known him, or at least the last four-plus years she had been married to him. Did he even know himself at all?
"Oh honey," she said in a disbelieving scoff.
Gil instantly recalled saying that to her after she worked that knot out of his neck, in a voice that had been laced with the barely concealed passion he was suddenly so eager to deny himself.
"All right," he conceded on an acquiescent sigh. "I suppose."
"Just accept the compliment," Sara told him. "I know it's hard, darling, but fair is fair."
He nodded and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Sara yawned.
"Do you want to go back to bed?" he asked.
Sara wasn't sweating anymore and she was obviously cold; she had goosebumps along the bare skin of her arms, and her legs were pressed tightly together under the blanket. She was tense from the cold night air. She had probably been up for at least an hour before he also woke up, and Gil was suddenly overcome by the desire to make sure she got back to bed and felt warm and safe.
"Mm, the sheets-"
"We can change them, Sara," he reminded her. It was not a big deal, but she said nothing.
He looked at her face in the starlight and beneath the dim glow of the boat's night lights.
She wasn't looking back at him, her attention was directed out over the horizon, toward the stars and inky depths, but Gil wasn't going to let her get away with just pretending she could stay up there and freeze. His stubborn partner, and his best friend. What was she thinking? Gil knew what he was thinking, but he hesitated. Saying it would only confirm to Sara that she was right about him.
Screw it, he thought. She always had been right about him. And them. And the two of them.
"I want to lie down with you," he said plainly.
Sara's chest rose above a deep breath as she sucked air into her lungs and finally looked at him. As their eyes locked Gil kept his expression clear, and deep. He saw the same depths stir in Sara's eyes. He could imagine her heart starting to race. In some ways they weren't all that opposite.
It had taken Gil a long time to get comfortable with just telling her what he wanted, it still didn't always feel natural, but he had learned he was often rewarded for clear and kind honesty. Sara valued those things. Her lips parted and she exhaled as they stared at each other. Gil raised his eyebrows and waited. His lips tugged upward in a happy smile and he pointed down to the water.
"They can't do that," he added proudly.
Those poor whales, he thought as he watched Sara. Couldn't even lie down with their mate.
The nod was almost imperceptible, Sara hardly moved, but Gil understood. He went to stand and Sara lifted her legs off him and stood as well. She winced as she stretched out the aches from sitting in that position for so long in the cold, and Gil lifted the seat up and opened the gate.
"I'll be down soon," he promised.
Sara picked up the water bottle she had put on the floor at some point, and she draped her wrap around her neck like a scarf. She followed Gil's patient gesture and climbed down the ladder.
Gil ran a few quick checks that were due, but there were no other boats visibly anywhere near them, the weather looked clear, and he felt they would be able to sleep another few hours. Sara would also feel stronger sleeping past sunrise and waking up in the warm sunshine, as she often did. He marvelled at how easily she seemed to forget that she was as tough as nails and cool under pressure, and the most quietly passionate person he had ever met, but all it ever took was one of her bad dreams. They knocked her off-balance more quickly and dangerously than the rolling waves. Gil suspected she never wore shoes in her dreams either.
But this time, on this night, she seemed to be all right.
Maybe it might have been easier if she was a sleeping whale, he thought. If they both were. The nights would be calmer. No nightmares, no night sweats.
But no real partnership either, Gil reasoned. If he was a lucky male he might experience fleeting moments of passion with a female, but there would be no lifetime alongside Sara.
No solving complex problems with her. No science experiments, no research, no navigating the world's oceans and its cities. No sleeping next to her or holding her warm body in his arms or loving her. No enjoying the casual massages and the feeling of her hands and mouth on his body. No more watching her stretch in bed beside him as she woke up, or on the deck on her mat. No more hearing her whisper his name into the air around them in the fraction of a second before she fell asleep.
Gil. Grissom. Gilbert. I love you.
She always sounded so innocent and sincere. He wasn't even sure Sara knew she did that.
There would be no late nights spent watching the stars and just talking, no photos or letters from their life together to reflect on, and no delighting in her spirit as she too studied and soaked up the world around them. Sara liked the whale analogy, but Gil was glad they were so very different. Every minute of all the above was worth every nightmare, and every drop of sweat on Sara's pillow.
Besides, whales couldn't appreciate the stars. Or the incredible evolution of insects.