Title: Journey of the Lonely Whale: All at Sea (Part 4: Gilbert and the Ring-Around)
Author: Lisa (ff: ljkwriting4life / twitter: lisa_james_85)
Rating: M. This story contains adult themes and sexual references and coarse language.
Summary: Gil and Sara take advantage of a day of good cell service.
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 FOUR: GILBERT AND THE RING-AROUND
"Hold still, Gilbert," Sara said as she stood behind Gil with the electric trimmer. She edged it along the base of his hair as she tried to hold his head still.
"It's not me, darlin'," Gil said with a voice full of mirth. "In case you haven't noticed, we're on a boat. I don't care if it's not straight. No one's going to be looking at the back of my head."
"And if I slip and zoom this straight up the back of your skull?"
"I wear hats," he stated plainly. He paused. "You've done this before and it's always fine."
"I know, I know, it's just-"
"It's just one guest lecture, it's one hour of our life. I've done it hundreds of times, and not once has anyone commented on my hair."
Sara settled down. She finished what she was doing, turned the trimmer off, and ran her fingers through the rest of his thick, short white hair to make sure she was happy with the evenness of her cut. It was tricky with the heavy waves of his hair that looped into soft curls when it got too long, but he was right, she had done this enough to know what she was doing. She liked how it sat.
"I thought you had nice hair," she told him quietly. "When I first saw you speak."
"You didn't tell me in the middle of the conference hall though," he pointed out smartly.
Sara pursed her lips in a playful smirk that he couldn't see.
"No, I thought that might scare you off wanting to go out with me." She held his head and pressed her lips to the crown before she rested her cheek there and draped her arms over his shoulders and around his chest. "Besides," she continued. "You thought of my hair too, and you didn't comment on it until nine years later when all I got was a cute little, 'You had a ponytail'."
"I remember that day," Gil whispered as he held and stroked her forearms and hands. "We were in the car. You hadn't been out of hospital long and you told Ecklie we'd only been together two years, and I said nine-"
"To be fair, I also told him we'd always had a relationship. He didn't like that, he wanted something more specific. He wanted to know when we started having sex; when we became intimate."
"Like this?" Gil asked as his thumbs worked their way up her inner forearms.
"Mmhmm," she hummed.
"So, you really told him that too?" Gil asked. "Nine years? Always? But you laughed at me."
Sara nodded, surprised that she must never have told him this before.
"Yes, sweetheart. We were always on the same page. I looked Conrad right in the eyes and challenged him to doubt me, and I only wish you'd been there to see his face. I'm sorry I laughed in the car. It wasn't what you said but rather the look of absolute clarity on your face when you told me nine years, as though there had never been a doubt in your mind from the moment we met."
"I remember your hair that day too, darlin', it was curly, and you had cuts on your face and your broken arm…and I remember the way you smiled at me when I told you about your ponytail."
"I do too," she whispered. She closed her eyes and recalled it. "I fell in love with you more that day. I felt it when I smiled at you."
"Me too," he whispered. "I saw it in your eyes, and that beautiful smile. I still love you in a ponytail."
"Don't you think I'm getting old for it, Gil?" she asked.
"I didn't know there was a rule about that," he said curiously. "Will you wear it down for the lecture then?"
Sara nodded against him. The last time they had returned to the coast she'd had her own hair cut shorter and coloured, and it was still curly, much as it had been that day in the car more than a decade ago, but she might straighten it for their lecture the next day. Gil was doing the true 'lecture' side of things, and Sara was just going to jump in and explain their research. The fun bit.
"Yes, for my cameo, a whole three slides," she said. She kissed the top of his temple and inhaled the smell of his freshly washed hair. "But you'll see me in a ponytail again, don't worry."
"Good." He chuckled and held her arms comfortably over his chest. "Are you having fun up there?"
"Yes," she said. "Just desperately attracted to you, like always."
"There's certainly no rule against that, Sara," he said in a low voice that left Sara in no doubt about what he wanted to come from this simple domestic act of kindness. She loved when he said her name like that too. It was the same way he spoke to her when they made love and he said her name while he was inside her, and it wouldn't be the first time that a haircut led to such a climax.
"Later," she promised. She sighed, straightened up and patted his chest. "Gil, we promised, we have to do the ring-around, it's been too long and we're finally somewhere with great service."
Gil groaned.
"I know, but duty calls."
"Can you do most of the talking?" he asked.
"Yes dear," Sara replied. She rolled her eyes since he couldn't see her.
"Sara, is that really you?" Greg asked excitedly into the phone half an hour later.
"It's me," she said with a bright grin. Gil had only just re-entered the cabin from the cockpit and shot her a look as she directed her grin to him. "Can you talk, Greg?" Sara asked into the phone.
"Yeah, sure. Video?"
"Sure," Sara nodded. She removed her phone from her ear, turned it sideways, and activated the video mode. She waved as an image of Greg's body crackled to life. He was at his home, and it looked like he was attempting to prop his phone up against something on the dining room table while he wrangled small child number two. "Hey, he's getting big!" Sara exclaimed when Greg sat down and she got a proper look at the child that he sat on his lap. Jack Sanders had a shock of blonde hair and was looking around as Greg bounced him on his knee.
Sara waved Gil over and he slid into the booth seat at their dining table beside her.
"I know, isn't he?" he said. He smiled. "Hey Grissom, how's life on the high seas?"
"Swell," Gil replied, teasing Greg with a little pun and a twinkle in his eye. Greg laughed.
"Actually it's really great today," Sara told him. "We're giving a lecture online from the boat tomorrow so we're just off the coast, positioned for perfect internet and maximum bandwidth."
"Oh, that's very cool, I bet the students will get a kick out of it."
"We hope so," Sara said. She smiled as she watched Greg's eyes shoot off-screen, probably in the direction of child number one, who had just shouted. "Where's little Josie?" she asked.
"Watching her favourite movie, I hope," he said. "When I got your text I set her up with it, and uh, she's just started singing along to the songs. So, if you can hear her, that's what it is."
"It's fine," Sara said. "How are you two going with the kids?"
"Uh, you know, most days are good," he said. "We're tired, I never thought I'd get to the point where I could have too much coffee, but the kids are amazing and the lab's been so good about work, and I'm enjoying this little stint as a stay-at-home dad too, you know?" He hesitated, and the look on his face was obviously the panicked realisation that no, Sara and Gil did not 'know', and he thought he shouldn't have said it. "Sorry, all I ever do is talk to other parents, it kinda sucks-"
"It's fine, Greg. We can imagine," Sara said quickly with a sincere smile.
Gil put a hand on her thigh under the table and she glanced at him briefly with the same smile. She wrapped her fingers around his hand beneath the table too.
"How's the lab?" Gil asked Greg, deliberately steering the conversation to neutral territory.
"Oh man, you guys wouldn't even recognise it hey. It's swish. I feel like every time we talk it's just undergone this massive change. I do have some news for you about that though. I've been pinched by the private sector, a genetics lab gig. Actually, it's a lab director gig, how funny is that? I guess it's kind of a step back out of forensics and I'm gonna miss being in the field so much, and the team there now is amazing, but it's also just like…way too good an offer to pass up. I reckon it's time, and I can set the kids up for the future, and I was thinking about it, and now I'm about the age you were when you left for good, Sara. You probably timed it just about perfectly, you know?"
"Well, I thought so, it was the right time for me. But you know when you're done, Greg," Sara assured him. She squeezed Gil's hand against her leg. "You just know it in your gut."
"Yeah, I do. And to be honest, I mean, I know I say this every time we talk, but these last five years haven't been the same. Catherine and the team here have done so much to drag the lab kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, but without the people… It isn't the same."
"I know," Sara assured him. They had all felt that loss over the years. The lab without Warrick was never the same. The lab without Gil was never the same. And she supposed that to Greg, the lab without Nick and Sara wasn't the same either.
They were a family, but they had always been a work family and time had a way of ensuring those didn't last. Other families got made in the process, like hers and Gil's, like Greg's, and Nick's. They were all hanging on as best they could, though. Sara was trying hard to hang on to them all.
"I'm sure it'll be great, Greg," she said with a hopeful smile.
"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. "It's not official yet, but who are you two gonna tell, right?"
"Exactly!" Sara proclaimed happily, and they all laughed because Gil and Sara were on a boat in the middle of the ocean. They kept everyone's secrets.
"I just think," Greg continued. The baby began to fuss and he jiggled a bit harder, but Sara knew the call was going to have to end soon. "I just think about what the two of you did for me, and I think it's time for me to be someone else's Grissom and Sara, you know? I gotta go find my Greg."
Sara almost cried at the determined look in his eyes. He had matured so much since she first met him as a geeky lab tech in his early twenties, rocking out to metal in the lab and inserting himself as often as possible into every case. Gil and Sara had mentored him and had trained him to be in the field, and he had become one of the best CSIs. The crime lab would feel his loss deeply, but he was also in his forties now, he was a husband and a father. He had other priorities, and Sara knew all about those kinds of hard decisions, and the good that could come from them.
Greg would be fine, he was a good man, but this was the last member of the old team in the Vegas lab, leaving. It was officially the end of their time in that place. It just wasn't the same place.
"I think we're a little speechless, Greg," Gil finally said, when it became clear Sara couldn't say anything. His own voice was choked when he added, "That means a lot to us".
"Yeah, I wanted to tell you that," Greg admitted softly. "And I've made sure that people here will remember you two. The Vegas legacy. I've made sure they know." He sighed when Jack started to cry. "I'm so sorry to do this to you, I'm sorry but he's really tired and I've gotta get him down-"
"It's fine, it's fine Greg," Sara assured him. "It was good to talk. Email me your new contact details if you're moving, or your work email, or whatever. Good luck, and just stay in touch, okay?"
"Will do Sara, Griss. Bye."
He hung up just as Jack screamed and before Sara got out the full goodbye. She put her phone on the table and took a moment to stare at the familiar laminate and gather her emotions.
Gil sat quietly next to her and his hand affectionately rubbed her thigh.
"Okay?" he asked after a minute.
"Yep," she said stubbornly. "You?"
"Sure. That was oddly intense for Greg."
"You remember Greg, right?" Sara asked. She forced herself to smile. "Odd and intense could be his middle names. You just never quite know what flavour of intensity you're going to get."
That was sentimental Greg, she recognised. She loved him.
"Are you sure you want to keep going?" Gil asked. "We don't have to."
Sara laughed a little and rolled her eyes. He wasn't getting out of it that easily!
"Yep," she said again. "Who's next? You pick."
Gil picked Catherine, and instead of using Sara's phone, they used Gil's laptop to call her over the internet with the link she had emailed Sara. They could never say for sure what time they were going to be able to call, but Sara liked to arrange the ring-around in advance when they knew they were going to be in a good position, to maximise the chances of people being able to talk. Gil admired his wife for her organisation and tenacity. He was grateful for the effort she put into maintaining relationships that he would otherwise let go of too easily.
He had almost let Sara go too easily.
Over the years since, Gil had watched more carefully as Sara came to terms with the only extended family she had been close to separating and drifting away, as their old colleagues got on with their own lives, as they got on with their life together. It was a bittersweet and unavoidable evolution. Catherine had told him once that his team were forming a family around him whether he liked it or not, but what he also hadn't realised for too long was that Sara – the outsider he had brought in from San Francisco, the self-professed 'loner' who was serious and a little dark despite her big smile and all her kindness – had matured into the glue that had held that family together.
And having seen her in action in the last five years, he knew better now the impact of that decision thirteen years ago to move her to the swing shift after their conversations with Ecklie about their relationship, and the way that forced separation from the family had compounded her anguish in the months that followed. He still wished he had been the one to move to swing. He still wondered what their lives might look like had he insisted on that decision for the two of them.
He sighed, but Catherine's face popped onto the screen in that moment and he forced a smile to his own face. It was still good to see her. She looked to be in her office at the Eclipse.
"Hello you two," she said. "Nice of you to finally check in. Just how far down the call list am I these days?"
"Sorry Catherine, we had some things to do earlier," Sara said.
"Sara gave me a haircut," Gil announced proudly.
Sara buried her face in her hands dramatically as Catherine laughed.
"Oh, I see, very good," Catherine teased. "It's looking very snowy white these days, isn't it?"
"It's the sun," Gil said convincingly, and Catherine laughed again.
"Oh sure! How are you both? You look well."
"We are, thanks," Sara said. She glanced to Gil, and that was his invitation to talk to Catherine about their lecture the next day and how they were going with their research. This was one conversation Gil was comfortable with. He and Catherine were the oldest of friends, more than twenty-five years now, and he hoped she was proud of the life he and Sara had now; she had played such an important role in it, over the years. Catherine listened well and asked thoughtful questions.
"When will I see you both again?" she finally pressed. "Because as good as this is, it's not the same as sitting down together. I don't suppose you're coming back here anytime soon, to Vegas."
"We hadn't planned on it," Sara admitted. "LA, though, if you let me know dates we'll see what we can do. We can always-" She hesitated and looked at Gil, and he raised his eyebrows pointedly, but Sara forged ahead. "It's always possible for us to get to the nearest port and fly to you, Catherine. You might only get me in that deal, though, sorry. Gil might need to press on with research, depending on what our next project is and where we end up."
"You know what?" Catherine replied with a kind smile. "I'd really like that, Sara. The offer is always open, and you should do that. You spend all that time on the boat with Gil and, no offence Gil, but I'm sure Sara could use a little girl time. When's the last time you spoke to another woman?"
"There are women in our research teams," Sara said. "Academics."
Catherine just laughed, but Gil thought it was a valid point.
"I'd um, I'd like that, Catherine," Sara conceded with a simple shrug. "I'll see what I can do. How's Lindsey? I still can't believe that little girl I met all those years ago now is married."
"You can't believe it," Catherine said plainly. "I can't believe she even wanted to get married after watching Eddie and I in those early years. But she's found herself a nice, mature young man, and she's settling into life in Ireland. I wish I got to see her more than I do, that we also did less of this." She gestured to her screen. "She asks about you both sometimes, wants to know how you are."
"Please tell her we said hi," Sara said. "Does she know what she's going to do over there?"
"Oh, I think motherhood is on the agenda-"
"Is she pregnant?"
"Not yet, but she's told me that's the plan, it's what they want. I don't think it will be long." Catherine's eyes slid to the right. "You look shocked, Gil."
"He's just trying to imagine you as a grandma," Sara said.
Catherine laughed as Gil shrugged innocently and allowed a playful twinkle to reach his eyes.
"Please don't, I'm not ready!" Catherine insisted. "I don't even know if Lindsey is ready. She's got absolutely no idea what's about to hit her, the crying, the worry, but then again, neither did I. I jumped into it with nothing but blind faith, and life seemed to sort itself out in the end."
"It does that, I hear," Sara said. "Have you thought of moving there?"
"I have," Catherine admitted. "But I don't want to intrude. His family is all there, they're very traditional and they love Lindsey, and I've got responsibilities here. I visit, my God if she has a baby she won't be able to keep me away, but moving would be a big step and I'm not ready to retire."
"What would you do with the casino?" Gil asked.
"Exactly," Catherine stated without answering him. Her smile softened as she looked at Gil. "And how are the two of you? And I'm not talking about the research and teaching. Still blissfully wrapped up in each other and this semi-retired life of leisure, sailing into the sunset every evening?"
"Yep," Gil answered quickly with a proud grin that made Sara blush and laugh beside him.
"You both just look incredible," Catherine said. "Happiness suits you. I always thought that."
"Thanks," Sara said. "Today's a good day, but we're doing really well out here. We miss you."
"Oh sure," Catherine taunted playfully.
"No, it's true," Gil assured her. "We think of you often."
"Yeah, well, ditto," Catherine confessed. "Don't leave it so long to call next time, all right? Life feels like it's moving very quickly these days, and you know as well as I do how short it really is."
"I know," Sara said. "We'll always do our best. Stay in touch, email, the usual."
Catherine agreed and they said their goodbyes and Gil ended the call. He turned to Sara.
"Why do all these calls today involve talk of crying babies?" he asked his wife.
Sara gave him a bemused look.
"Oh please. You know just as well as I do that if things were different you could be a dad, or even a grandad by now. My God, Gil, we could have a teenager by now."
He grimaced and shook his head.
"I can't even imagine it," he muttered, but Sara pinned him with a knowing stare.
"That's bullshit," she said. "Yes you can, and I know you have, over the years. I have too. But just because I can imagine it, that doesn't mean it's something I ever truly wanted for us, and I know you feel the same way okay? This is just our friends, doing life, and I'm pleased things have worked out for Catherine, and Lindsey. Sometimes I wasn't sure how that little girl was going to turn out."
"Catherine's a great mom," Gil said.
"I know," Sara replied quickly. "But she worked hard, we all did. I know Catherine had to work hard to get to where she did and I admire that a lot, but in a way, it also doesn't surprise me if Lindsey chooses not to work so much if she doesn't have to, at least in the beginning, with a baby."
"You don't know that," Gil said, curious about her point of view.
"No," Sara reasoned patiently. "But it's natural for children – some children at least – to want to do things differently to their own parents. I know I've tried to live my life a certain way, even if for a long time a part of me believed it was inevitable I would become my parents one day no matter what I did, with or without children of my own. Every time I really lost my temper part of me would remember mom and dad and the fighting and his death, I'd hear their voices instead of mine, and even after I calmed down I'd still go home and worry that this was the day I'd reach the boiling point that triggered the breakdown and the schizophrenia, and sometimes I was just…waiting for it."
Gil reached up and tucked a lock of curly hair behind Sara's face, so he could see her better.
"I hope you know you're past that point. Honey, I can't remember the last time I saw you get that angry. It would have been more than twelve years ago, before you went to Costa Rica, and we both know you were struggling on the swing shift, and so much of that anger was tied to the job, and you left and you did what you had to do to deal with it. If that fear was going to eventuate, darlin', it would have happened by now, and it's not inevitable. You have a type of fight inside you that your parents didn't have." He paused. "What you said about Catherine," he continued softly. "Sara, you had to work hard too, to get to where you did. You're a survivor. Catherine reminded me of that the day we were searching for you in the desert, and it's true. You appreciate that about yourself, don't you?"
"Yes," she whispered in earnest. She pressed her lips together in a tight smile as she looked into his eyes. "Gil," she continued as her eyes searched his. "You know it's okay if all the baby talk makes you feel a little sad or, or I suppose, nostalgic for the time that has passed."
Gil silently asked her with his expression if that was how she felt, and she sighed thoughtfully.
"I suppose it's just a reminder to me that time isn't standing still," she explained. "That all these sunsets we enjoy are actually markers of days and months and years marching on and we're in this beautiful holding pattern and I love it, every day of it, but hearing Greg call our life in Vegas and all of that work we did a legacy, and hearing him promise that he's done his best to preserve a memory of the two of us there before he leaves…I don't know, it kind of felt like we'd died."
"That won't happen for a very long time," Gil promised her. He remembered one of their earliest conversations about having children, or more specifically, not having children. Sara had said that, honestly, the only reason she would want a child would be so she could feel like she and Gil would live on together in the world even after their time was up, and while there was nothing wrong with that idea being a motivating factor for other people's decisions, Sara firmly did not believe that was a good enough reason for her, not when it was her parents she was most afraid of living on. Gil had always suspected she was afraid of looking into her own child's eyes and seeing one or both of her parents, locked in a new little soul that she was forever responsible for loving and protecting.
He agreed with her position, but even if he hadn't, he never would have asked her to risk it.
"Let's take a break," he suggested. "Make something to eat, sit outside in the sun."
Sara looked like she was about to cry and Gil wasn't sure what more he could do.
"I promise we're alive, Sara," he said. She just nodded.
At least the next call should lift their spirits, Gil thought.
"Hello, Gorgeous!" Jim exclaimed over speakerphone. "And you too, Sara."
Gil and Sara both laughed as they leant toward the phone on the table between them.
"How are you, Jim?" Sara asked. "How's retirement?"
"Boring," he declared. "But I suppose it had to happen sometime. I can't complain, but I don't have a whole lot to report. Where are you both? Tell me everything you've been up to."
Gil and Sara took turns talking to Jim about their travels, the boat, the research.
"Are you looking forward to teaching tomorrow, Sara?" the retired police captain and casino security manager asked.
"Gil's doing the teaching, marine research ethics. I'm just going to give a short explanation about what we do."
"You should do more!" Jim proclaimed. "Gil, she's a star. Give her more to talk about."
"I've tried," Gil said with a laugh. "I agree with you."
"I thought you were meant to be retired," Jim insisted. "Let your wife work, for God's sake."
"Excuse me, he doesn't 'let' me do anything," Sara interjected with a laugh. "It's my choice, and I work plenty, we both do. It's just not what most people call work, more like home maintenance."
"Does keeping the boat up to scratch burn through a bit of cash?" Jim asked.
"It can do," Gil said. "We do as much work on it as we can ourselves."
"What happens when it reaches the old use-by date?"'
Gil and Sara looked at each other carefully. It wasn't something they had discussed in detail.
"I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Jim," Gil answered. It wasn't just about the boat. The boat could run another five years but by then Gil would be Jim's age. Seventy. It sounded like it should have been a very long time away and yet it was just around the corner. The reality was, they just didn't know how many more years they would have like this on the Ishmael.
"For now, we're enjoying semi-retirement," Sara told Jim. She offered Gil a smile as she looked into his eyes even as she spoke into the phone on the table between them. "We've had a busy few years, but right now we're trying not to get tied up into any long-term commitments. We'll do short periods of data collection and the odd guest lecture or conference presentation from the boat, help write up the papers, earn what we can, manage our money and travel the world."
"Yeah-yeah, rub it in why don't you," Jim said with a laugh. "Hey, are you still doing your crime lab thing too?"
"Yes," Sara said. "Just once a year, enough to stay current but not long enough to get sucked back into that space. I still find it interesting of course, we both do, it's just…"
"It's just not numero uno," Jim answered for her. "I get it. You do you, isn't that what the kids all say these days?"
"Probably," Sara said with a laugh, as Gil glanced at her quizzically and shrugged.
"So about tomorrow, Gilbert," Jim said. "I still think you should get Sara to do some more of the talking. We both know who really runs the show, right? They'll love her."
"Thank you, Jim," Sara replied. "But I haven't done a lot of teaching, and I want Gil to do it."
"Ah, fine, fine. I think you just like listening to your husband teach," Jim said. "Takes you back to when you met at that forensics conference, am I right? Saucy."
Gil just laughed as Sara blushed and rolled her eyes.
"That is not the reason," she insisted, but she ended up laughing as well.
Gil winked at her playfully.
"Sara made a great video," he said. "She's edited together some of our drone footage and images of one of our research teams. She's going to play it tomorrow as part of her introduction."
"I bet the kids will love it," Jim said.
"They're post-grad students and researchers," Gil replied. "Adults, Jim."
"Gil, I'm seventy. If they're under fifty, they're kids. Sara, you're fifty, right? You just made the cut."
"I'm flattered," Sara taunted in a droll voice, which made Jim laugh. Gil hated to admit it but he felt the same way. Hell, he'd felt the same way all those years ago working with Greg. Just a kid.
"Did you enjoy your birthday present?" Sara asked Jim hopefully.
"I did, thank you doll. I'm still enjoying it. Half a bottle left. Best whiskey I've had in years."
"Wonderful, it's one of our favourites," Sara declared. "In fact, we still have a couple of bottles around here somewhere."
"One and a half," Gil stated factually.
Sara and Jim both laughed.
"Yes, all right, one and a half to be precise," Sara conceded. "We'll have a drink for you tonight, Jim."
"I think of you both out there every time I have some," Jim said. "I like to think I've had a hand in keeping you both alive out there on the ocean all these years, the number of times I've sent some good thoughts your way over a late-night drink, or whenever I get one of your postcards, hoping you don't get knocked over in a storm. That's one phone call I don't wanna get."
"I promise, I travel with a very experienced and cautious navigator," Sara assured him.
"And she's one herself now," Gil added quickly. "We've been caught in storms, Jim. We've always pulled through together. We've been fortunate."
"That you have," Jim agreed. "And you always were a tight unit, but I'll keep up the good wishes just in case. Keeping fit out there?"
"Yes, we're both healthy and well," Sara assured him. "You?"
"Can't complain," he said. "I better let you go, yeah? You got other calls to make today?"
"You were our last one," Gil said. Nick had told Sara he was working and couldn't talk.
"Oh, I'm flattered," Jim said, echoing Sara's earlier taunt in a similarly dry tone.
"Lucky last!" Sara insisted with a laugh. "I'll call you again soon Jim, okay?"
"You better, I want to hear all about how tomorrow goes. Take care now, both of you."
"You too, Jim," Gil said, before they all said goodbye, and Sara ended the call.
Gil sat back in his seat and sighed. Finally, they were done. It wasn't that he hated the ring-around. He certainly didn't hate seeing and talking to all their old friends and colleagues. It was just that all it did was remind Gil that none of them could open the door on the past and go back.
Gil wished he could say that whenever he spoke to Catherine or Jim or Greg it was as though no time had passed at all – that was a popular marker of true friendship, right? – but he couldn't say that. He felt time leaping forward over their phone calls and video calls, just as Sara said she did too. Only, he wasn't as good at navigating these awkward, intermittent interactions as Sara.
Sara was the only person Gil had ever met for whom that marker of true friendship truly applied. It didn't matter if he and Sara spoke every day or not at all for three years. Every time they spoke, it was as though no time had passed at all. He recognised that was something very special between the two of them, but it was also clear how much their old colleagues still thought of her.
Sara was so much more than a survivor, he thought, she was a star, and being part of this family still meant so much to her. Gil watched her pick up her phone and send a text message with a smile on her face. Gil guessed she was probably texting Nick, taunting him about having to work.
"I better go up," he said as he gestured above them to the cockpit. He was feeling emotional, but Sara looked content and happy. She nodded without looking up from her phone.
"Okay darling, see you later," she said casually, as though he was just heading off to work for an hour. In a way, he was.
Sara kept busy in the cabin for the next couple of hours. She texted Nick back and forth a few times while he darted between meetings, she looked over her presentation again for the next day, and she tidied up and made a cup of tea and read a few chapters of a book on her tablet, and generally pottered about below deck.
Gil always needed time to decompress after the ring-around. The aspect of forced socialisation that came with them making the calls and then carrying on personal conversations over the phone to people he had not spoken to for sometimes months at a time was more difficult for him, and she knew she wasn't alone in always feeling a little old and sad by the end of it.
They did not want any of the various types of lives that their friends had, Sara couldn't think of anything worse, in every case, but it was a reminder that they were all drifting further apart. Gil felt it too even if he didn't want to admit it or didn't quite know how to talk about it. So, he just needed some time. In a few hours they would pretend it didn't happen and they would move on.
Sara was eager to move on too. She didn't know how to feel about being called a legacy, but it had felt good to hear Gil tell her that she had worked hard to get to where she was. Sometimes she felt guilty for being so-called 'semi-retired' at only fifty, while Nick was still working so hard, and Greg would also be working well past that age with young children to support. Jim had worked until very recently, and Catherine was still working. What must they all think of her? Kicking back on the boat each day, taking photographs while Gil sketched, collecting 'data' and sipping tea and hanging out with her husband in the fresh air and sunshine? Some days it was hard work, but not always.
Sara hoped her friends understood that if it was up to her alone she would still be working more, perhaps not in the crime lab but in another way. Maybe one day she would return to working more, but she would be older and she knew in her heart she wouldn't do that until Gil was gone.
Sara sat on the edge of the bed and chewed at a fingernail as she tried not to cry.
He would be sixty-six soon. She didn't want him to be gone. She wasn't ready. It wasn't fair.
Okay, so, in truth? A part of her hated the ring-around too.
Sara tried to pep herself up because this deliberate forecasting to make herself sad was stupid. Gil was not an old man. Gil at sixty-five was a vastly different physical proposition to Jim at sixty-five, and even Nick, as Sara imagined him in the future as an older man. Gil had become healthier in the last five years. He was fit and strong and lean except for the softness of age around his middle that Sara loved, and her body wasn't so different. There was so much life in him. Some people lived life to the fullest from an early age and in some ways gave too much of it away too soon, but Gil had stored his life up, he had dolled it out in small portions, at an easy pace. He was patient.
As though he had always known he would be needed for a long time.
On his sixty-fifth birthday he'd said he was aiming for thirty more birthdays. Sara didn't doubt that was what he wanted. If he lived to ninety-five he might even outlive her; she couldn't imagine herself at eighty. She could imagine Gil at eighty-five though, much the same way as he was now, with his thick white hair and glittering, clever blue eyes. That was twenty years away, she would be seventy, and anything could happen to either of them in that time. She might never go back to full-time work.
And fuck what anyone else thought of it, she told herself. She had earned this rest, this joy in her middle age.
She had fucking earned it.
"Sara."
Gil's deep voice surprised her. She looked up and saw him standing on the other side of the cabin, by the stairs. She smiled and wiped her cheeks self-consciously. They were dry, just flushed.
"Hi," she said. She opened her mouth to say more but she looked into his eyes when he took a step forward, and words failed her. Sara recognised that look, and that low and smooth voice, and she immediately recalled their conversation earlier in the day after she had finished cutting his hair. He wanted to be with her, right away, and Sara had absolutely no problem with that. The way she was feeling, and the way he looked, full of passion and depth and intent; this was going to be good.
"It's later," he said.
"Well, Gilbert," Sara quipped as they wrapped their arms around each other in bed and she rested her head on his bare chest. "If you're trying to convince me to call our old friends less often, you're going about it the wrong way. That was…"
"Wonderful," he whispered. He lifted his head and pressed his lips to her forehead.
"Mm," she hummed happily. She found one of his hands and laced their fingers together between their chests and racing hearts. "Infinitely," she whispered. She listened to him breathe.
"It wasn't just the phone calls," Gil eventually continued. "This morning, when you said…"
"That I was deeply attracted to you?" she ventured after he drifted off.
"Mm, and that you fell in love with me more that day in the car, after I finally commented on the ponytail. I was just upstairs remembering the way you looked at me, that look in your eyes that I still get to see all the time, you're so beautiful, and I thought…no one we spoke to today gets to stop what they're doing in the middle of the afternoon to make love to their wife, this one person who somehow...still loves me so much."
"Mm," Sara hummed again. She didn't need to confirm it or to say any more. Her warm fingers gripped his hand and she lifted her head and looked down at him. She stretched forward and Gil lifted his head to meet her halfway for a tender kiss. Her hand slipped from his and wrapped around the back of his neck to support him. Her hair fell over their faces, and Gil pushed it back and held her hair and caressed her head. He didn't need to say he loved her either, it was so clear to her.
When the kiss ended, Sara put her head back down on Gil's shoulder and nestled into him.
"When I was young," she said. "I never thought…that I would have this kind of life."
"Me either," Gil assured her with a chuckle as he held her hand to his chest again. "I definitely never thought I would tolerate anyone calling me Gilbert, but I don't mind it, honey."
"I'm only teasing," she whispered. Like Jim, but in an even nicer way, she hoped.
"I know, I like that," he mumbled tiredly. He needed a sleep. Sara would get up and navigate for a while.
"I'm proud of our life, Gil," she whispered. "I never needed to be the one to teach but I am looking forward to talking about our life tomorrow. I'm proud of the things that make us different."
"I'm glad," he whispered after a moment, as though he might not have been so sure. "Did you get on to Nick?"
"Yes, I said I'd call him tomorrow after our lecture. He's in meetings all day today. I told him that sounds terrible and I was going to have a cup of tea and read my book for a little while. Sucker!"
"That's not what you were doing when I got down here." Gil hesitated. "Were you okay?"
Sara scoffed and then laughed at the absurdity of the tender question in hindsight.
"What do you think?" she asked. "I thought I just channelled all those emotions very well!"
"Oh, Sara," Gil simply replied, in a satisfied voice that left her in no doubt about how well.
"Good," she stated, hoping she sounded just as satisfied as she also felt. She was so loved. "I was fine," she then answered more seriously. "I'd just been thinking about us and…everything."
"Me too," Gil admitted quietly. "Thinking."
Sara nodded. She had understood that already, she understood him, and irrespective of what anyone thought of the boat, and no matter how long it continued as their home, the Ishmael had given them a lot of time to think, and to talk and to love. It had given them their marriage back.
It had given them their freedom.