He'd called her "Miss Sidle" at first, a formality he'd often adopted with students. She wasn't technically a student, but she'd hesitated for the tenth time and looked over at him with that intense brown gaze and asked if she could sit with him at dinner – to continue talking with him about his lecture, of course – and his world had shifted just a tiny fraction. So he'd called her Miss Sidle, desperately clinging to his last bit of common sense.
They had lunch together the next day, and after he told her to just skip the "Dr." part and call him Grissom – all his colleagues did – she'd finally rolled her eyes and told him to just call her Sara, already, because she was beginning to feel like she was back in college listening to her eighty-year-old Russian history professor.
"Sara," he said, and enjoyed – or liked – or maybe loved – the way her name tasted and felt and sounded on his lips, "this can't possibly be that different than talking with your professor." He tried not to stare at the curly brown hair she'd let escape from its ponytail, or her smooth, gorgeous skin or the energy that vibrated off her, and he tried to focus on the fact that his knees already ached sometimes when it rained and he was going gray and he couldn't even remember his Russian history professor in college.
Sara rolled her eyes again. "Grissom," she said, and he wondered what "Gil" would sound like in that strange, low, velvet voice. "Trust me. I would not still be here if this were anything like talking to my professor."
Seven years later, she was still there. And eventually, he did find out how her voice sounded when she said his name.
She thought it was a little strange that he went by his last name, but after a while it rolled off her tongue as easily as any other name…and probably more often than any other name did.
Secretly? She loved it when he called her "Miss Sidle." There was something about the way he said it that was deliciously formal and intimate at the same time, and it sent a hint of a shiver down her spine. It was nothing like talking to her professor, who half the time couldn't have even remembered her name. So she told him to call her Sara, because she'd always found her name vaguely boring and figured there was no possible way he could make it sound like anything special.
She was wrong. Of course. Over the next few years, she found that he could make her name into hundreds of different things – an endearment, a reprimand, a curse, a caress, a warning, a joke – all of them special.
"Sara," he'd murmured into her neck one day as they lay spooned together in her bed, half asleep. "Means princess."
She'd grown used to his non sequiturs. She snorted. "I'm nobody's princess, Grissom," she informed him.
Grissom laughed quietly. "Maybe not," he said. "Means 'lady', too, though," he mumbled. "And you are my lady." He'd kissed her ear as he drifted off.
There was something about the way he said that, "my lady," that conjured up images of chivalry and courtly behavior and devotion and love and all sorts of things that didn't seem so silly coming from him, and she found that really, she didn't mind that interpretation of her name at all.
"Gris?" she called out from the sink, where she was loading the dishwasher.
"Sara, do you find it odd that we've known each other for more than eight years, have been seeing one another for more than a year, and have been sleeping together for almost ten months and you still call me by my last name?"
Characteristically, he delivered this totally out of the blue question in a perfectly normal tone of voice, without looking up from the book he was reading.
Stalled in the act of putting the last plate in the dishwasher, Sara stared at him for a second. "…I hadn't actually thought about it," she said finally, "but I do find it odd that you can reel off those lengths of time at the drop of a hat and still can't manage to get our evaluation paperwork in on time." He did look up at that, smiling, and she closed the dishwasher and crossed to where he sat on the couch, plopping down sideways next to him and stretching her legs across his lap. Grissom closed his book and rested it on her bent knees. "Seriously, though, I've never really thought about it," she admitted. "It's what I've always called you. It's what everybody calls you. Even Catherine and Brass call you Grissom half the time, and they've known you longer than I have." She frowned. "It just sounds funny."
Grissom put on a mock offended look. "You find my name amusing?"
Sara laughed. "Not funny ha-ha, just funny weird. Like I'm talking to somebody other than you, almost." She tilted her head and studied him. He was still smiling a bit, but there was something in his eyes… "You really want me to stop calling you Grissom," she said, brushing her fingers over his cheek.
He took her hand in his and kissed her palm. "I want you to call me whatever you want to call me," he told her. "But, in the interest of you having all the data, I would like you to know that I've wondered for eight years what you saying my name would sound like."
She couldn't help but smile at that. "Well, then." Leaning in closer to him, she touched her lips to his, ever-so-lightly. "Gilbert."
He groaned, and kissed her back. "Not Gilbert. That version of my name will always, always be attached to the memory of my mother discovering me dissecting a cat in her garden shed. She didn't speak out loud very often, but when she did, I listened."
Laughing, she pretended to consider. "I don't know, I kind of like it. Gilbert." She kissed him again, tugging on his shirt until she fell back on the couch with him on top of her. "I think it might suit you."
His response was a glare. "Sara Sidle," he muttered, brushing her hair off her face so that he could kiss her temple, "I swear…"
"Gil," she said softly, stopping him in his tracks.
"Yes, Sara?" His eyes were intent on hers.
"The way I say your name. Gil." The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Is it like you imagined?"
Gil smiled and slowly, lovingly kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheek, the spot on her neck that always made her knees go weak…
"So much better," he murmured, and kissed her lips.