DISCLAIMER: Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!
RATING: T – For Teen (for mature subject matter)
PAIRINGS: GSR
SPOILERS: Sort of a Post Ep for TGTB&TD, but really a sequel to Silence, NV
SUMMARY: Grissom is trying desperately to sort through the problems of his relationship with Sara, and quickly learns that Silence isn't their only problem. Sequel to Silence, NV
A/N: I know the first part was short, but this should make up for it. Might not be until next week before the last part is done. I've got 2 other stories I'm trying to finish, plus I'm getting ready for my annual geek pilgramage to Atlanta in a couple weeks.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: My betas are beyond awesome, but the real credit behind this fic is the readers, and one reader in particular over at YTDAW. I know she doesn't read WIP's, but I can guarantee that she'll be doing a little happy dance when she sees the notice for this one. ;)
REVIEWS: Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Dead Horse Trail, NV
Grissom was beginning to believe that the fates were conspiring against him as he drove out to the Dead Horse Trail for their latest pickup case. Nick was sulking in the back seat because he had to go out with the senior CSIs, instead of getting his own case, and Catherine was smacking her gum in the passenger seat as they barreled down the road.
When he noticed Catherine begin to fidget in her seat, Gil knew that things were about to get worse. She reached onto the dash and found the blister pack he had carelessly tossed up there after his doctor's appointment that afternoon.
She held up the item and frowned, "Ya know…this stuff doesn't work if you don't take it, Gil?" Catherine reached back and grabbed one of the water bottles from the cooler, twisted off the cap, and then popped the first pill through the foil of the blister pack. As she handed them to him, she reached out and held the steering wheel steady so that he could take the pill.
Handing the water back to her, he said, "Thank you."
She shrugged and leaned back into her seat again. "I just can't believe you went so long before seeing the damn doctor. You've been sniffling around the lab for weeks now. And I don't really think you ever killed that cold from your little vacation on the ice flows."
"It was not a vacation. It was a sabbatical so that I could teach, and Massachusetts is hardly an ice flow, simply because they have an actual Winter." When he stopped speaking, he was a little concerned with the whine that had magically entered his voice during his response.
Catherine, ever on the ball when it came to busting his chops, snorted, "Want some cheese with that?"
Grissom simply kept his tongue. If there was one thing he had learned during the course of their unlikely friendship, it was that Catherine thrived on sniping at people, and answering her would only feed the fires. His plan was to suffer in silence for the rest of their drive, but even that was not going to be possible with her in the car.
She flipped the box over and read the label. When she finally understood what it was he was taking she exclaimed, "Damnit, Gil! Are you contagious, or something?"
He was shocked by her outburst and asked, "What are you talking about?"
"You're taking antibiotics… What've you got, and why the hell did you get in a confined space with me?!" Catherine was turning red with her question and he was at a complete loss as to how to answer her.
"Don't get your panties in such a bunch… It's just a sinus infection, Cath." Nick's solemn voice answered her rant from the backseat, and then he added, "No drama necessary."
Immediately whipping around to catch sight of Nick, Catherine was obviously shocked at his answer. From the rear view mirror, Grissom watched the fear fall over Nick's face when he realized that he would have to explain how he had come by that information. "What?" His first instinct was to play it off.
"Are you gonna tell me how it is you know that? Did you get an MD when I wasn't looking, or what?" Catherine never made anything that easy, and Nick was going to have to come up with something better than that. Grissom became worried that he would fail, because Nick was simply not capable of lying.
"Gimme a break, Cath… The man's been sniffling off and on for more than a month now, if it was somethin' contagious, the rest of CSI would've already gotten sick." Grissom began to relax with Nick's explanation. "Besides, just listen to him. If that ain't a sinus infection, I don't know what is." The part that Nick deliberately left out was that he probably found out about his bosses health from Sara. Gil knew that she was spending a lot of time over at Nick's since they began their separation.
Satisfied with his answer, Catherine went back to brow beating Gil about how badly he was taking care of himself, and once again telling him just how much he needed a woman in his life. What he could never tell her was just how much he agreed with her, or how much he wished that woman could forgive him, and that she would ask him to come home. Instead, he took all of Catherine's abuse, in some bizarre act of penance, because he felt like he might have deserved all of the hell she had to dish out. And based on the silence from the backseat, Gil assumed that Nick was in agreement with his position.
Grissom used the opportunity of Catherine's unending tirade about the way he was wasting his life to think of all the ways he really had wasted his life. His entire life had been about the search for knowledge, but it was also about running away from the simple truths of life.
He knew that to truly live, one must share their experiences and their souls with others, but he was always far too afraid to take that final step. Opening himself up to others also meant that he was allowing himself to be hurt again, to feel the pain of loss, to know the pain of…silence. And that was how he knew; he knew how much pain he caused for someone else with his silence. He knew that he needed to fix that part of himself that allowed him to isolate everything and everyone from his feelings. He wanted to find a way to open up, to trust, to be able to talk. He needed to do all of these things, and he needed to do them with Sara. He wanted to do them for Sara.
The only problem with that theory…there was just never enough time. Las Vegas appeared to be working against him, as the volume of cases the night shift was handling had doubled over the last few weeks. More often than not, he would get stuck at the lab, or on a case, and Sara would walk the dog on her own after she finished breakfast alone. They even missed each other at the lab a great deal of the time. And then there was the issue of his cold.
On two occasions he managed to get away in time to meet her for breakfast after their shift, but he was sneezing and coughing so badly, that Sara instantly instructed him to see a doctor. However, his stubbornness about his physical health had changed very little over the years, despite the consequences, and he waited until it became totally unbearable to seek professional assistance. By the time he saw a doctor, his cold had become a raging sinus infection, and the doctor was concerned that the congestion and resulting infection could have eventually damaged his hearing in the process.
Feeling unbelievably foolish about the whole thing, he only told Sara about the sinus infection, and left out the warnings about the congestion and the possibility of damage to his hearing. Not only was he protecting his dignity, he was also protecting Sara from feeling any guilt. He wanted to win her back at all costs; all costs but that one. Grissom was not about to resort to guilt or dirty tricks. She deserved better than that, even if the cost was his exile existence to a world of perpetual silence.
When he listened to Sara that day in the townhouse, he realized just how much silence had affected his life, and how much his life was damaged by it. With his father's death, he plunged into a vacuum of silence at home. Eventually, he stopped speaking altogether, and at school, the other students began to isolate from him. His whole world existed within his own mind, completely.
His only escape from the silence was a kind hearted English teacher in his high school. She taught him about the glory of the spoken word, of the beauty in the classics and in poetry, and she helped him to find a voice. But following her untimely death before he finished high school, his new found voice became nothing more than a disguise behind which he could hide himself from the world.
Grissom became a fount of information, and facts, and the beauty he found in those words translated into nothing more than a parroting behavioral quirk that most mused about, while others became annoyed. But there was one who found the secret of his habitual quotations; she broke the codes of his cryptic form of detached communication, and saw into his heart.
He reached into the center console for a tissue as he felt yet another dam about to break in his sinuses, and he realized just how much he missed working with Sara as well. If she had been in the passenger seat, he would never have been given the chance to reach for the tissue. Of course, if Sara was with him on the case, then there were a lot of things he would not have the chance to do, like concentrate on anything but her.
When they finally arrived at the site, Grissom delegated the tasks to everyone and the three got to work on their special favor case. He only hoped that things were going well back in town.
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"Son of a Bitch!"
"Well, if you don't wanna work with me, all you had to do way say so… There's no reason to get personal." Warrick could instantly tell that Sara was angry about something other than running the gang shooting with him, but he simply could not resist the temptation to ride her about the outburst.
"What?" Sara turned back to him with a confused expression on her face. It was obvious his joke had failed to hit the mark. Realization hit her face and she came back to her senses. "Sorry… It's not you, it's just…" She released a heavy sigh, "I had plans. They were a longshot, but still…" As her voice trailed off, Sara glanced down at her watch and seemed to be figuring something out in her head. "Hey, gimme ten minutes and I'll meet you outside. I gotta grab some supplies and make a call, okay?"
"Yeah, sure, Sara… Just hurry it up, okay? With Catherine and Grissom taking Nick out on that special favor call for the Mayor, it's just you, me and Greggo on the hook for anything that comes up. And Greg's already pulled a trick roll and a smash and grab at the hot dog stand tonight." She nodded as she walked away, phone in hand, heading towards the Print Lab.
Mandy was shaken from her manual print comparison by the groan from the slender woman walking into her lab, as Sara shut her phone with so much force the thing should have broken from the impact.
"Problem?"
"What?" Sara seemed startled by her soft question, but the smile on her face made the woman relax, just a bit. "Sorry, Mandy." She looked around and nervously asked, "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"Not really." She pushed the print card forward and set her folder down over top of it when she turned and asked, "What can I do for you?"
Sara heaved a sigh and then went into her response, "I really hate to ask this… You and-" She looked around to check for prying eyes and ears, "Well, you know… Anyway, you've been great through this whole thing, and I hate to ask for anything else, but I can't reach Gi-" She stopped herself just in time, and Mandy nodded that she understood what she meant. Well, I just pulled a gang shooting, and um…neither of us is going to be home anytime soon and we-…"
"I'll swing by and get the little guy. He and Sadie can play in the park with the kids." Sara's questioning glance gave Mandy a chance to smile again. She shrugged and explained, "I'm meeting my sister at the park in-" She looked at her watch to figure out how much time she had left. "In about three hours. She's got some errands to run, and the kids have been dying to play on the slides over in the park. So, I got stuck watching them while she runs around town for a couple hours. The dogs can help me keep them entertained."
"You're the best." Sara turned to leave the lab when she remembered something. "Hey do you have N-…the spare key?"
Mandy withdrew the ring of keys with the Aggie key fob dangling from it, jingling it in the air. "Had to switch cars this morning… Apparently, mine needed some kind of service or something." She comically rolled her eyes at the implication that she had failed in her car ownership duties. When the corner of Sara's mouth curled up into a smirk, she knew that her work was done. "Just come and get him after work tomorrow. We'll enjoy the doggie slumber party."
"Thanks again…for everything." Mandy waved her off as Sara practically jogged out of the building.
Shaking her head, she got back to work, wondering how those two were ever going to get things sorted out with their insane schedules. "Those two are stupid for each other, but they better wise up soon... Before it's too late."
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Arriving at the lab, Grissom checked his watch and was delighted to see that they had actually gotten back right at shift's end. It was nearly worth the year of his life that Catherine's driving cost him if it meant not disappointing Sara once again.
Gil slowly and painfully rolled out of the Denali and tried to stretch his back. He worked to shake some of the numbness from his hind quarters as he walked to the back of the vehicle. The cracks and pops were getting worse every day, but it reminded him of his goal; a return to his big beautiful bed with a gorgeous warm and waiting body to curl up with everyday.
When he reached the back of the Denali, Catherine called from the other side. "Hey! I'm gonna get the paperwork started, if you two can handle logging the evidence?"
Nick closed up his phone and waved her off. "Sure thing, Cath!" He opened the door and looked around the lot suspiciously. If he had not been so concerned about time, or so unbelievably tired, he would have indulged the younger man, but Gil Grissom had somewhere else to be.
"Are you going to open it up, or just continue looking for someone?" Grissom put his hand on the latch when Nick finally snapped back to his attention.
"Huh? Oh yeah, sure." Nick pulled the doors open, and reached in for a box. When Grissom went to get another box, he stopped him, "I can handle this, if you want to just run the log book."
Gil looked a little shocked at Nick's gesture, and that was when he realized that his back had been talking for him. He knew then that he was not doing a very good job of hiding his discomfort. "It's fine, Nick… Just a little stiff from the drive."
"Oh yeah, sure thing, Grissom." The two men loaded up the evidence and got ready to take it into the building.
As they started walking, Grissom was surprised when Nick started to apologize. "Sorry about being such a pill today. I was just frustrated because I thought we wouldn't get back before shift was over, and I had…plans."
"Yes, well I can understand that myself." There was the smallest hint of a grin on his face as they walked towards the entrance.
"Yeah, sorry about that, too." Grissom stopped cold at Nick's second apology.
"Sorry about what?"
It was Nick's turn to stop dead and he turned to face his boss with an ashen look on his face. "She…didn't call you?"
Shaking his head, Grissom tried to make sense of what Nick was saying. "Who called about what?"
Nick put his box down on the ground and took the one from Grissom's hands before he said, "Maybe you should check your voicemails."
His hand instantly went to his phone. He had turned it off when the signal died halfway to their crime scene, because he decided there was no point in leaving it on when it was no longer possible to receive calls. Frustrated by his cold and the pain of trying to sleep on that suicidal couch at Jim's, he forgot to plug his phone into the charger after his last shift, and the low battery alarm started the moment Catherine climbed into the Denali earlier. Turning it off was also effective in getting her to stop complaining about one thing, anyway.
The moment the phone booted up, it bleated with the sound of waiting voicemails. He keyed in the proper sequence and codes, only to be greeted by the exasperated sound of Sara's disheartened sigh in the all too brief first message. The second message was more of the same.
By the time he reached the third message his apprehension was making his pulse quicken. It was obvious that something was wrong with Sara, and he began to run through a million horrifying possibilities.
"Gil… Don't worry." As was always the case, she seemed to know what he needed before he did. "Sorry about the first messages, but I've gotten called out on a gang shooting, and with you three out on some dog and pony show for the Mayor, we've had one hell of a night. Anyway…since I didn't know when you were going to get back, and who knows when I'll get done now, I was worried about who was gonna take care of the boy… Mandy's picking him up after work and taking him and Sadie to play with her sister's kids in the park." She paused just long enough for him to wonder what was in her mind. "I'm sorry about breakfast…again. Don't worry about the boy, he's staying at Casa de Sadie today, and I'll get him after work tomorrow when Mandy and I meet up for the gym. Just get some rest, and try to take care of yourself, okay? We'll try again this weekend."
He recognized the distinctive sound of the lab's security doors opening as the message continued, and he knew that she was walking outside as she spoke into the phone. "I'm sorry about this, but you know how it is… I mis-" The moment she stopped speaking he heard Warrick's familiar voice telling to her to hurry it up. "I gotta go…this weekend, okay? Bye." Before the message ended, he heard Warrick razzing her about making him wait so that she could talk to some boy toy, but that was the least of his worries.
All of the air was taken from his sails the moment he heard the resignation in her voice. He could feel the hopelessness in her message, and it drained the last of his strength.
"Grissom… I'll take care of this stuff. Go on home." Nick took charge of the evidence and handed him the keys to the Denali. He could only nod his head to show his agreement.
Walking back to the truck, he wearily said to himself, "If only there was a home to go to."
A/N2: I know, I know... There are those of you out there who are now ready to have me drawn and quartered for this part. But if you've read any of my other angsty stuff, you know that I have to make them work for it.