Happy CSI day!!

I've had this story in my drafts for months and months, waiting for a time to post it, and going back over it to try and end it properly. I hope the effort has paid off, and I hope you love it!

Takes place after Law of Gravity, with a ton of Grissom POV retrospect. Take a dive into his mind, his childhood, his emotions and his heart.

Xx

breathe

The thing with Sara is, well, she's like coming up for fresh air.

I never realized what waking up entwined with a woman as vibrant and passionate as Sara could do to me.

I'm a scientist - I understand the basic laws of attraction. The flushed skin. Clammy hands. Breathlessness. The irrational heart rate, the difficulty communicating. The 'butterflies' as some like to refer to them, which I can understand to a degree, even though in reality it's simply a bodily reaction, muscles spasms and caught breath. The dreams, god the dreams.. and the unfortunately obvious male physical reaction upon waking from said dreams. Or, even worse, snapping out of a day dream.

I am also a smart man, so admittedly, while I tried my best for years to suppress it, I have never actually denied that the two of us had chemistry. I just never realized how powerful that chemistry was; how much potential it had.

I suppose that makes me a fool, really.

A scientist who underestimates the elements? It's laughable. Isn't that a key factor of our work? Finding and trusting the evidence? Letting it tell the story and determine the outcome?

It had always been in front of my nose, I just didn't trust it. I didn't trust myself, really, so I didn't let myself see it.

I have, however, and will always trust Sara.

It's why I brought her here in the first place: I needed someone I could trust. I knew from the moment I met that young, fiery, peppy Sara Sidle I could trust her with many things.

My briefcase, as I ran to grab us each a coffee from the cart in the university greens all those years ago in San Fransisco.

Confidentiality, when I asked her here to Vegas to look into Warrick and cover the slack.

The sanctity of evidence, when I asked her to stay and join my team. Join me.

With my own position at the lab, when I refused to fire her last year.

And eventually.. I trusted her with my heart.

I guess I had always trusted her with it, really. As I say, it was myself I didn't trust. I didn't trust myself not to fall absolutely and completely for her.

I am a man of discipline. I like order. Organization. Consistency. Quiet. It's how I was raised. And Sara, well.. she's the exact opposite of all of those things. She is all over the place, she can be harsh, and believe it or not she has a potty mouth. Fuck and shit are two of her favourite words, off the clock. She is messy, not in a physical way of course, she is always clean and well kept. It's her mind that is messy. She can be disorganized and very inconsistent. She certainly isn't quiet. I can hear her laughing with the guys in the break room from down the hall, and the music she plays on the way to scenes when she drives is the furthest thing from calm. I'd even go as far as to call it obnoxious. So why was I finding myself so helplessly drawn to her?

Before he died, Dad was a man of few words but he loved very deeply. I was always in awe of him, and I frequently think about how I wish I could have had more time with him to learn how to be the kind of man he was.

Everything in his life always had it's place: family, teaching, his students, his plants, his books, baseball. He was passionate about each element of his life - gave each part his heart and soul. It always amazed me how he could do that, how he had so much heart and soul to go around and never snapped under the pressure. He was strict, but he was always strict with love.

It's how I tried to manage my team. I always think of Dad when dealing with the 'shit', as Sara would say, at work.

I think I spent so much time trying to compartmentalize the various aspects of my life like Dad that I forgot to nurture the one that actually meant the most. Family. Love.

See, Dad had his hobbies and his work.. but his family, mom and I, we always came first. He would dance with my Mother in the living room every Sunday evening at 8'oclock on the nose.

He was a stoic man, but his face and eyes lit up when he looked at her. Every single time.

I'll never forget the look on his face the Mother's Day before he died when she came inside from her flower bed with dirt on her face and knots in her curly hair; he looked at her as if she were his oxygen and he had been holding his breath for years.

That's how Sara had always made me feel, from the moment we met.

A breath of fresh air.

Energetic, vibrant, beautiful, wildly intelligent, passionate, haunted, messy, loud, brooding and so terribly, impossibly young.

I never had the chance to learn my father's secrets.

I never got the chance to ask him how he juggled it all, how he made room for mom and I around his work and his passions.. so the idea of figuring it out on my own was intimidating. That's why, for so long, I didn't.

Again, laughable. Pathetic.

A nearly 50 year old man, intimidated and worried about pursuing a relationship with a beautiful woman because his father never told him how.

And then I found out about her father.

How he died when she was twelve, at the hands of her own mother. Her abusive father, who drank all night and slept all day and hit her mother repeatedly. Sara assured me he had only hit her a handful of times, usually only when she had gotten in the way, but that he was getting angrier and angrier with her in the months leading up to his death.

She thinks that's why her mother did it. She ended up with a few broken bones, and had 'fallen' down the stairs once. Gotten a beer bottle to the back of the head once.

She says that she had been "relatively unaffected".. which I don't believe for a second. How can you be unaffected by that at age twelve?

The thought of it brings bile to my mouth. I can close my eyes and picture her, young and so fresh, with a cast on her arm or a bruise on her jaw.

Imagine, going through your teens with that weight on your shoulders. My poor Sara. Displaced from her home, living with strangers, all the while thinking her mother killed her father because of her.

I realized that afternoon I visited her, that we had a deeper connection than either of us knew.

We were both 'fatherless' and grew up without that figure to look up to; learn from.

Neither of us knew what the hell we were doing, we just knew how we felt, and knew the pull wasn't going away anytime soon.

We are scientists, after all.

Take two powerful, stubborn magnets and put them in the same room.. allow the charge to build.. there's no way you can keep those forces apart forever.

So we caved.

I caved, really.

Sara had always been there, offering herself. She often jokes about how she had been "desperately begging" me for years, but in reality she handled it with more grace and patience than I ever could have, had our roles been reversed.

Once the dam broke, I needed her so badly, I would have begged on my knees.

For a time I had wondered if her attraction to me, while flattering, was more of a school girl crush. Maybe a subconscious 'daddy issue', seeing as I am 15 years her senior. I knew it would never be to 'get ahead' at work.. she wasn't that kind of woman.

No, it was when she woke up with her head in my lap after I had convinced her to join me on the couch and let me hug her that afternoon; when she opened her eyes and those chocolate orbs looked at me, her cheeks rosy pink from sleep and embarrassment.. that's when I knew.

I knew I was doomed. And not in a bad way.

I realized that none of it mattered.

I finally realized Dad's secret. It clicked.

You don't fit your family, your love, into everything else.. you fit everything else around it. Everything else had to fit around Sara. There was no other possible way to proceed with my life.

Once it hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Funnily, it was Sara who suggested we tread lightly. Take it slowly. I understood her completely, because I hadn't had the best track record when it came to her emotions.. let alone my own. I also hadn't dated in several years so I wasn't exactly prepared, nor did I know what to do.

We agreed, that afternoon, that we would give this a try.

We didn't really know what this would look like, or how this would work out.. and it wasn't until after we had found Nick that anything significant really happened between us.

I had been holding my breath for nearly two days, looking for Nick. Picking and combing through every shred of evidence. Choking on the frustration and Las Vegas heat. It wasn't until I was back in her apartment, with dirt caked on both of our faces and in our finger nails that I realized I could finally breathe again. She was my fresh air. She had always been my fresh air.

It's funny, though, how someone so refreshing can bring the air back to an old man like me, while simultaneously taking your breath away. That first kiss, the first time she kissed me, I couldn't breathe. I never wanted to breathe again.

It was short and sweet. So soft, like I had always imagined it. She tasted like chapstick and soil and salty tears.. a little bit like the gum she always chews. She tasted like Sara.

I loved her that night like I've never loved anyone.

Or maybe she loved me.

Sex had only ever been sex to me, part of the reason I never felt overly tempted to spend my time with a woman, but this.. this was..

Either way, we fell into this beautiful pattern of intimacy that night that we never labeled, never really spoke of, never questioned.

I stopped working as many unnecessary doubles so that I could stop by her apartment on my way home and love her. She would stop by my condo at all hours of the day, looking ashamed and bashful so that she could love me.

Eventually, I realized that this, whatever it was, was taking over every fraction of my being. Initially it was terrifying. Like my biggest fear becoming my reality. She knew me.

She knew the spots to touch that drive me wild.

The scar on my thigh, the way my little toe on my left foot is crooked from a childhood incident on the bike. She knew I preferred to shower after I drank my morning cup of coffee, so she would start the pot and shower first, giving me time to wake up before passing the bathroom off to me. She knew I enjoyed reading a certain book before falling asleep, and that I would toss and turn in her bed the nights I forgot it at the lab or at home so one afternoon when I walked into her bedroom I spotted a brand new copy of the book. Not wrapped. Nothing sentimental or fancy about it. She just knew.

I don't know how else to describe what developed between us other than a remarkable calmness. Consistency. Order. A quietness that I had never expected to share with Sara. She was very discreet. We never had to have the awkward conversation about keeping our home life private, she just knew. She understood. So we did.

We fell into this pattern of work, pleasantries at the lab and at a scene.. and then a deep intimacy in the early hours of the afternoon at home in our bed.

I had always known she was a passionate woman, but her passion in the bedroom.. or the bathroom.. or the kitchen.. or the living room.. once even in the car.. that was a passion I had sorely underestimated.

I always figured she was a sexual being, I could read that on her face and in the way she held herself. Besides, she was a young beautiful woman, of course she was sexual. Once we came together, though, I realized it went so much deeper.

She awoke in me the man I had been denying for so long. With Sara I was no longer a scientist or a doctor or a supervisor or an entomologist or Grissom. I was Gil.

Gil, the man with physical needs and she knew, without me having to utter a word, how to fulfill them. She opened my eyes to so many things I had never even considered, including the first time I had been made love to by only her lips and the tips of her fingers.

I had been intimate with women before of course. Four, to be exact, before her. But it had only ever been for an instant gratification and or for natural human fulfillment. All when I was younger, too. It had always been good, but never ever like it is with Sara. I had never been made love to with a mouth. I had never made love to a woman with my mouth. God, the honey sweet nectar that is Sara Sidle.

With her, I learned I had never really 'experimented' with positions and places. Some scientist I am.

Making colourful and exotic love with Sara made me realize how black and white my relationships and my love life had been before. No wonder I never felt the need to take the risk.. I didn't know what I was missing out on. Sex without love makes you sad, so desperately sad... but making love.. the satisfaction and happiness is earth shattering. It's monumental. It changed me.

I came to her that night because I felt this overwhelming connection with her I could no longer deny. My body screamed for her every second of every day and I couldn't explain it. Every inch of my skin burned to touch and be touched by her.

We haven't said those three words to each other yet, but we both know how we feel for one another.

My sabbatical clarified that even further for me.

I know now I hurt her. I've never been someone who can communicate well.. so when I told her I needed time and space to think about what I wanted.. I assumed she knew I was talking about the job. Not her.

I know I want her. I will want her forever. Every inch of her. Every moan and tremble and squeak and tear. Every quiet afternoon on the couch with our respective books. Every loud, obnoxious music filled car ride to a crime scene, her fingers laced into mine. Every nightmare and every sick day. I want all of her for the rest of my life.

Apparently, she didn't know that. She doubted me. She doubted herself. She doubted our relationship. She thought I was leaving to decide if she was what I still wanted.

We only spoke once while I was gone, on the phone.

I had just gotten to my room on campus and called her to let her know I had arrived. She must have been home, because the background was silent and her voice sounded so flat. Purposely emotionless. I could tell that if I were looking at her, her face would be flushed, her lips pursed, her eyes unreadable, brow furrowed. She'd probably have her arms wrapped tightly around her torso - a defence mechanism to subconsciously protect herself.. from me.

I told her again on the phone, foolishly, that I would miss her.. and that's when I heard her choke back what I assumed was a sob.

Sara rarely cried, and if she did, she even more seldom shared it with me. I had only seen her cry about four times in my entire time knowing her. She had to be utterly heartbroken or utterly moved in order to shed tears in front of me. That afternoon in her living room, for example. Or after we made love the first time. Her tears were silent, then, but stung my arms in such a deeply intimate way.

I knew this was big, I had messed up. I couldn't see her face, but I knew. She had hidden it from me well while I was still in town but now that there was a country between us and a convenient "end call" button, her voice betrayed her.

She took a deep breath and had quietly and shakily said to me,

"When.. when you figure out what you want, Grissom, just tell it to me straight. Don't beat around the bush, ok? I-I can take the games again. We played them for too long. Just.. just tell me what you decide you want so I can deal with it and try and move on, ok?"

She called me Grissom, not Gil. That's when I realized I had 'fucked up', as she would say. I wished I had never left Vegas, never left our bed, never left her body. Our last time making love wasn't even our normal passionate and playful banter, it was filled with an unspoken sadness and farewell. She clambered off to the bathroom afterwards without a word. I knew she was crying in the stream of the shower, she did that sometimes, but I didn't have the balls to follow her and comfort her. Instead I laid there waiting for her to return, and chided myself for being so incapable of reassurance.

I could hear her shaky breathing on the other end of the phone while she waited for me to say something, anything, and finally I replied equally as emotionally and as quietly:

"Sara," I spoke slowly, trying to choose my words correctly, "It's not you,Sara. I-I need to figure out if I can keep doing the job.. it's.. it's wearing on me. If I would enjoy teaching instead. I just.. I needed a break, Sara. I'm just so tired."

"Do I make you tired?" She had asked pitifully.

"No, Sara. No. You... you bring me to life."

I'm not entirely sure she believed me, but the emotion in her voice returned to somewhat normal. I wanted to tell her then and there that I loved her, but I couldn't find the words and I knew I couldn't say it for the first time over the phone from a different state after having just left her with next to no notice. If anything, it would make this all worse. That much I knew.

We didn't talk again on the phone the whole time I was gone. We texted a couple times, she asked if Hank had extra food at the condo, or if she should grab some at the store. I asked her to grab a package for me I was notified had been delivered to the post office... simple domestic things like that. We never spoke about the elephant in the room again until I had come home.

God, she had looked beautiful in that hallway.

I felt like I finally understood my father, that Mother's Day.

Sara had dirt and landfill all over her but I had never seen her more beautiful and more refreshing. Her hair in a ponytail just as it had been when we first met that hot day in San Fransisco. In a jumpsuit, too. I had always had a thing for her in a jump suit.

She looked thinner, and I briefly considered whether she had been taking care of herself while I was gone. Her eating habits had been less than ideal before we got together, but since then I had been cooking for her or discreetly bringing her lunch. Had she grown used to that new normal, and reverted back to her black coffee, gum and pancake diet since I'd been away? Probably. I figured I would probably go back to my condo and find decomposing groceries in the fridge and fuzzy orange juice.

We still have our separate living spaces, but Sara is never at her's anymore. All of her clothing is at mine, because it's easier. I also asked her before I left if she would stay at the condo so that Hank didn't have to be boarded for a month, to which she silently agreed. I could sense the apprehension on her face when she agreed, that is. She asked me if I minded her being alone in my space for a whole month without me, and the concept never occurred to me that it was uncomfortable for her. Of course I was fine with it. I trusted her, and she already basically lived there anyways. She had been in my home alone several times, whether she made it back to the condo before I did, or I had to leave for a scene while she was still gloriously asleep in bed. Again, another miscommunication as I had assumed she viewed my home as her own like I did, but my departure left her insecure in absolutely everything.

She was questioning her place in our home.

I arrived home tonight to a quiet home. No Hank running up to greet me. No gentle hum of the shower in the other room. No Sara scent. It was odd, because I was later than usual from being at the scene with Catherine. Suddenly, the silence of my home that used to bring me such comfort felt terrifying. Nauseating.

I looked around and I could tell she had been staying here, which brought a brief smile to my face but it faded quickly. Her favourite blanket was draped over the couch, a journal, a couple of case files and a half empty cup of what I assumed was tea, on the coffee table. I winced at the thought that she had possibly chosen to sleep there instead of our king sized bed. I had bought a new mattress one weekend after our relationship had become serious and she luxuriated in it as often as she could. She loved the bed. We both did.

I came back three days earlier than originally planned so she wasn't expecting me so soon. Would she have moved the blanket and her book and her tea cup away from the couch to avoid letting me see how she had been living the last month?

I checked the fridge, and while there was nothing offensive and liquefying, it was stark empty aside from some water bottles, yogurt, broccoli and a couple Chinese takeout containers. Much like how her fridge looked in the beginning of our relationship. My gut wrenched for her.

I heard the door open soon after that and Hank came bounding at me eagerly, attacking me with slobbery kisses and growls of approval. I gave him a firm quick pat, and promised him more later, and then quickly turned my attention to the person who had picked him up from the sitters and brought him home. Sara.

She stood in the entrance way with a guilty look on her face, pink cheeks, her hair up in a lose ponytail but curly as ever from air drying after her shower at the lab. She was struggling to keep hold of at least 4 huge grocery bags. They nearly covered her entire body.

I rushed to her and relieved her arms of the bags, and suddenly she didn't know what to do with her hands and let them slip awkwardly to her hips.

"I was, ah, going to replace everything in the fridge before you got home on Friday..." she mumbled, her cheeks still flushed.

I nodded, and brought the bags down to the counter, quickly returning to the entrance in front of her. I watched as she kicked off her shoes and removed her faux leather jacket.

"Did you eat, Sara? While I was gone?" I asked quietly.

"I'm not a child, Gil. I don't need you to take care of me and make sure I'm eating." She snapped back at me, a flash of anger in her eyes as she met mine.

I cowered under her angry gaze and nodded again, shoving my hands into my jean pockets in surrender. God, this was awkward. What happened to us?

"Sorry." She mumbled as she mimicked me and safeguarded her own hands in her pockets. "I'm just tired."

"You've been sleeping on the couch." I stated, it wasn't a question this time.

She shrugged, "Some nights, yeah."

"Why?"

"I.." she shook her head, "It was just easier."

I met her gaze again and could see some unshed tears in her eyes, as she gave me a half smile.

"The bed smelled like us." She shrugged again with a half laugh, chiding herself.

"Honey.." I sighed as I gave in to my pride and enveloped her in a deep, strong hug.

As soon as my arms held her thin frame again for the first time in nearly 25 days, the dam broke.

She began to tremble in my arms, and my limbs felt like jelly. Like a jello man we'd make at the lab for reconstruction. Unstable and wobbly. See through. Exposed.

"I'm sorry I didn't clean up, I-I've just been at work a lot more the last couple of weeks." She mumbled into my shoulder between sniffles.

"It's nothing." I reassured her as I rubbed my palm along her back, feeling her shoulder bones and spine along my finger tips, and then I gave her a quick kiss on her temple.

She backed away and with teary eyes, gave me a genuine lopsided smile. Her cold palm coming up to my cheek to cup my bearded cheek.

"I like this." She smiled, cheekily as her thumb and pointer finger twisted a portion of my facial hair.

"Yeah?" I laughed, "It's a little unruly."

"I like it." She nodded as she ran her fingers through it again.

We both inhaled deeply, composing ourselves. Talking had never been our strong suit.

"How, ah, how was your trip?" She asked quietly.

"Suffocating." I replied honestly, and almost laughed at her shocked expression so I elaborated, "Massachusetts is beautiful, but the class was full of know it all's and the apartment was stuffy and cold and very very lonely."

"Mm." She nodded, knowingly.

"I missed you." I added, in a low husky voice, hoping the tone of my voice conveyed my emotion.

"There weren't any tall, brunette twenty-six year old level one CSI's there giving you sexy eyes from the second row to keep you company?" She teased, and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders with her changed demeanour. I returned the chuckle, and embraced her again.

"No." I simply whispered, as I kissed her forehead. "You weren't really worried about that were you?"

She shook her head, and backed up to look into my eyes, "No, but I was concerned you'd come back different."

"Different?"

"Not.. ah, interested in.. this anymore." She spoke quietly as she gestured between our bodies.

"Sara," I exhaled with exasperation. "No. No, no."

"Sorry, I-I'm not this person, I'm not this insecure girlfri.. partner.. whatever I am." She laughed again, "I.. I know you needed time away from the job, I could see it. I could see you crumbling but I didn't want to... I started to think maybe it was all too much, maybe, I don't know, maybe I was too much. Too much weight on top of it all..."

"Sara." I repeated, dumbstruck. I shook my head in utter disbelief, staring into her eyes.

"Look, it's ok. Really. I'm fine, and -"

"Sara," I interrupted her, cupping her face with my palms, willing myself to say the right words. "Sara."

She was gracious with me. Patient, as I rolled my god damn tongue around in my mouth.

"Sara," I repeated again, and saw her teasingly roll her eyes at me, "You are the least heavy part of my life... I-I... I needed time to figure out what I wanted in my life, yes.. but, Sara you were never up for debate. It was never even a question in my mind."

She inhaled a shaky breath, and I watched as her cheeks flushed that sugar sweet shade of pink. I smiled, and brought her lips to mine for a gentle, slow kiss. Our first kiss in a month, and my god did she ever taste like home.

"You are the only thing in my life that has made any sense the last two years, Sara. I missed you every single day."

"You didn't call.."

"I know, I-I... I know you were upset, I was afraid if I called it would make things worse."

She laughed at that, but not a bitter laugher.

"You're probably right, I was angry. I probably wouldn't have listened to you."

I winked playfully and kissed her again quickly.

"Are you still angry?" I asked timidly.

"A little." She nodded, but then quickly grinned, "But not enough to sleep on the couch tonight.."

"Good," I replied, with an equally as teasing smile and a low intimate voice. "because I have every intention of showing you how absolutely certain I am of this."

"Do you now?" She laughed, her voice thick with suggestion.

A quick glance at the clock on the stove told me it was 8:00pm, and I smiled to myself, before turning back to her,

"Dance with me."

.

The thing with Sara is, well, she's like coming up for fresh air.

As I lay here beside her, entwined in her limbs, I realize what this passionate and colourful woman has done to me. Moments ago I was breathless as she writhed and gasped underneath me in ecstasy, yet I'd never been able to breathe more confidently in my life.

I love her.

I'm in love with her.

I know I am a smart man, so admittedly, while I tried my best for years to suppress it, I now know I can never in a million years deny our chemistry or deny the love I feel for her.

I truly never realized how powerful love was; how much potential it had.

I suppose that made me a fool, really, but not anymore.

I think Dad would be proud, because I've finally figured this out and I can finally, finally breathe.

End