Author's Notes: To follow the chapter.
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The Last Embrace
by Kristen Elizabeth
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October 2006
"Why bugs? What made you decide that you had to know everything there is to know about bugs?"
While Grissom carefully considered the question, the girl who had asked it waited patiently for an answer. They sat on opposite ends of the plush couch that the penthouse suite in her father's hotel boasted. He wasn't quite sure why she was staying there; something about her apartment being fumigated. He was even less sure why he'd agreed to come up for a drink after the university-sponsored reception.
But there he was, in a lavish hotel room with a Scotch in his hand and a woman young enough to be his daughter hanging on to his every word.
"It's very easy for a biologist to find the beauty in complex creatures like animals or…"
"Humans?"
Grissom continued, "An entomologist has to find beauty where everyone else just sees something that needs to be squashed."
Reese laughed at this, tilting her head back and putting her long neck on display. "Well, that's sort of an answer, I suppose." He quickly looked down at the drink in his hand. When he glanced back up, she was watching him. "Then, you consider it a calling? Doing what you do?"
"The bugs are a hobby. An avid interest. It's the 'forensic' part of 'forensic entomologist' that's a calling. Of sorts, anyway."
"I think it's the noblest job anyone can do."
Grissom smiled patiently. "I felt that way twenty-five years ago."
Reese tucked her feet up on the couch. "You don't feel that way anymore?" When all he did was sip his drink, she frowned. "I guess twenty-five years of bodies and more bodies…takes its toll. Even on the very strong." She paused. "We hear stories from our professors about how easy it is to burn out. Do you feel like you're heading there?"
He shook his head. But he answered, "Maybe."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Grissom felt lighter. Lighter and guiltier. Someone else should have heard that long pent-up admission.
Reese leaned across the empty cushion that separated them. "You've done so much for so many people. Has anyone ever thanked you?" She scooted closer to him on her knees until they were face to face. "Over the past couple of months, your passion and knowledge has helped me realize that this really is what I want to do with my life." Their eyes met. "Thank you."
Her lips were fuller than what he was used to. She closed what little distance was left before them, and kissed him slowly, like she was savoring the moment. It was only when she noticed that he wasn't moving that she stopped.
"Let me guess…" Reese took the glass out of his hand and set it aside. "It's been awhile?"
He tried to speak…to stop this…to say something, but she cut him off with another kiss, only this one was hard and hot and went straight to his head like a shot of cheap vodka. "Don't worry." Her mouth ground against his as she unbuckled his belt and stripped it off. "I'll refresh your memory, Doctor."
Grissom had never believed in out of body experiences…until he saw himself on the couch with a woman who was even younger than the one he'd denied himself for years. She was kissing him and unzipping his pants, and he was letting her. And if someone had held a gun to his head and asked him why, he couldn't have come up with a single reason.
Her hair cascaded over them, creating a fragrant curtain around their faces. Her body was curvier, her breasts were fuller. She just felt different. And, god forgive him, he didn't hate it.
Still, his arms stayed at his sides, neither helping nor hindering her. When Reese slipped to her knees in front of the couch, Grissom closed his eyes. He didn't want to watch the act anymore than he wanted to watch himself not stopping it. Her mouth was hot and wet; she knew what she was doing. But there was something missing.
If he opened his eyes, he wouldn't see warm brown ones looking up at him for approval.
It was over soon. And afterwards, he had no desire to pull her into his arms and hold her for the rest of the night. He didn't want to return the favor or take things to the next level. Somehow, if this one thing was all that ever happened between them, he could live with himself. It was ten minutes of abandonment. Ten minutes where he wasn't plagued with the debilitating notion that he wasn't giving enough, wasn't being enough, wasn't making someone happy like he should.
Fortunately, Reese didn't seem to expect anything more. He probably should have felt badly about that; she was too young to be so disenchanted. But when she silently withdrew to the bathroom, leaving him drained and exposed, he was just glad he didn't have to come up with any conversation.
With the physical release came exhaustion like he'd rarely known. As he dozed, Grissom dreamed that his phone rang, that Reese answered it.
He wasn't aware of a single word escaping his lips. "Sara…"
The next thing he knew, she was whispering him awake. Reese kissed him and he tasted mint from her toothpaste. But when she tried to climb onto his lap, he grasped her shoulders and held her back, shaking his head slightly.
"I can't," he told her. "I'm sorry." Gathering all of his strength, he got up and left.
Back in his own hotel room, Grissom showered. He made the water as hot as he could get it, but it wasn't nearly scalding enough to truly cleanse him. As it pounded the back of his neck, what had just happened with Reese hit him all at once, crippling him with the sheer betrayal of the act. Suddenly, all he could see was the face he loved.
She would still be up; it wasn't that late in Vegas.
He tried his house first, hoping she'd decided to spend the night in the sheets she'd helped him pick out only a few weeks after they'd started dating. All he got was his own voice on the answering machine. He tried the next number on his mental list, but her cell phone went straight to voicemail, a short, professional message that instructed him to contact the LVPD if it was a true emergency. Grissom dialed her home phone number last.
Hey, you've reached Sara. There's a distinct possibility that I could be screening, so if you really need to talk to me, make it worth my while to get up and answer.
The beep caught him off guard. "Sara," he began, woodenly. "It's me." He drew in a ragged breath. "Pick up, honey." He let a few seconds slip by, and with each one, his heart got a little heavier. "I guess you're out. Can you just…can you call me? Please, Sara. I miss you." He swallowed. "I lov…"
He was cut off by another beep as Sara's machine ended the call.
The next day, Reese put on a smile that was just as brilliant as it had been the night before, and Grissom avoided direct eye contact, and they went back to being teacher and student. He left for Vegas two days later, without ever receiving a call from Sara or attempting to make another of his own, hoping it had all just been a bad dream.
But Puck had said it best. What fools these mortals be.
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Catherine didn't offer to spring for meals very often. So when she called and ordered him to meet her at Little Buddha in the Palms, and informed him that it would be her treat, Grissom resisted his first impulse to turn her down flat, abandoned the frozen dinner he'd been about to pop into the oven, and got dressed to go out.
She arrived first, and had a drink waiting for him. "They call it a Fortune Cookie," she told him over the din of the packed restaurant.
He tasted it and made a face. It was quite probably the most sickly-sweet concoction he'd ever ingested. "What exactly is in this?"
"Rum, Midori, pineapple juice, cream. A man can't live on Scotch alone." Catherine sipped her matching cocktail. "You need to try new things every now and then."
Grissom forced down another mouthful of the cloying liquid. "Well, a diabetic coma will definitely be something new."
Catherine crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in her chair to study him. "So. How the hell are you?" Without giving him a chance to answer…or not to answer…she went on. "Things have been kind of quiet lately what with Greg's laryngitis and Sara not being around."
"She's in Texas."
"Visiting Nick's family, I know." She stared at him over the rim of her glass. "And almost as soon as she gets back, she'll be going on maternity leave."
Grissom pushed his drink aside. "Knowing Sara, I'm sure she'll try to work for as long as possible."
"She sure did with Cassie." Catherine clucked her tongue. "I'm hoping she learned her lesson."
"What are you talking about?"
"Look who's all interested in chatting now."
Grissom put an elbow on the table. "What happened with Cassie?"
"I never figured you'd want the details, Gil." When he continued to stare at her, she gave in with a toss of her hair. "She went into labor during an interrogation. One second she was grilling this idiot who'd tried to kill his wife, and the next she's having a baby." Catherine bit back a smile. "Jim was in the room with her. I was watching from outside. It was…chaos. Sara was doubled over and Jim couldn't seem to figure out what was going on. And the suspect was trying to get her to breathe, because he had three kids with the wife he hated, and he knew the drill!"
Grissom looked down at his drink as Catherine went on.
"So, Jim got the guy booked on attempted murder. And I drove Sara to Desert Palm. The whole way there, I'm on the phone trying to track down Nick, who I'd just sent out of town on a 419. When I finally get him, guess where he was? Stuck out in the middle of nowhere with Greg and a flat tire."
She took a breath. "So by this time, the whole labor's just speeding up like crazy. Forget the hours of waiting like most people have to go through the first time. No, Sara had to be freakishly efficient about the whole thing."
"Of course," he murmured.
"It took calling in a few favors, but I got the Highway Patrol to hustle their asses out to Nick and Greg and bring them in. They got to the hospital about forty-five minutes before Cassie arrived. Just in time for Nick to be there with her. Because really…he was the one who deserved to hear her ranting and raving. Not me. I didn't knock her up." Catherine took a smooth sip. "So, this time, she's going on maternity leave well before her due date. If I have anything to say about it, that is."
Grissom's only response was to pluck the fortune cookie from the rim of his glass and lay it beside his plate.
"I wonder who she'll rant and rave to with this one," Catherine mused. "Maybe her mother."
Again, he said nothing.
"Gil, I love the sound of my voice, but feel free to break in anytime." More silence. "Hello?" She snapped her fingers. "Hey…bug boy!" Finally, he looked up with haunted eyes. It only took a moment of looking into them before Catherine put a hand to her throat. "You've never gotten over her, have you?" Grissom looked away. "Oh, Gil. I'm sorry."
"Can I hear that again?" he tried to joke.
When he glanced back, her face was a mask of compassionate worry. "I know what it's like to watch a fantasy die. To realize you didn't take your chance when you had it. I'm probably the only one who understood why you left when you did. It can't be any easier for you now, having history repeat itself. Even if you don't have to watch them together this time."
Grissom cleared his throat. "So, you weren't in the room when Cassie was born?"
Catherine frowned. "Um...no. That would have been weird." She paused. "Why are we back on Cassie?"
"I just…I'm curious. It's a big part of, you know, Sara's life. And I thought…" He grabbed his glass took a few big gulps, instantly regretting it when the drink coated his throat. He coughed. "I thought I should know something about it."
"Really." She folded her arms. "Well, why haven't you asked her?"
"She's in Texas," he repeated.
"Right. The land time forgot. No chance of phone reception there."
Grissom shot her a look. "Just humor me, Cath. I don't ask a lot. Tell me whatever else you can remember about that day."
She stared at him with the observant eyes of an investigator. When she started talking, her words were slow and deliberate as she gauged his reaction to them. "She was born around lunchtime. I remember because Greg was about to go to the cafeteria to get some sandwiches when Nick came out to tell us it was a girl. I doubt he smiled that big even when the Cowboys won the Superbowl."
As she talked, Grissom's gaze glassed over. Her narrative wasn't enough to paint the entire picture; she just gave him teasing pieces that he had to assemble as best he could.
"We went in a little while later after they got her cleaned up. Sara was exhausted, but she wouldn't even try to sleep. She couldn't stop looking at Cassie." Catherine smiled softly. "Even all squished up from the delivery, she was a beautiful baby. I wish her eyes had stayed the color they were that day. I've never seen a darker blue. She had this one lock of hair on her head, already curled. I remember Sara just kept touching it." She laughed. "And talk about a daddy's girl. She wrapped her fingers around Nick's pinkie, and that was it. She had him."
His hand curled about his fortune cookie, and with a crunch, it crumbled in his fist.
"Cassandra was the only name they ever agreed on," Catherine said, her eyes going back and forth from his hand to his face. "Too much of a mouthful for such a little girl. So she immediately became Cassie." She stopped. "And that's it."
Grissom relaxed his palm, dropping the cookie crumbs and the fortune onto the tablecloth. "Thank you."
Catherine lifted her drink to her lips, but before she could sip, she blinked and set it back down. "You're keeping your hair very short these days."
He shifted in his seat. "Not anymore so than usual."
"Yeah, you are. I can't see any of those…" She stopped short. "…curls."
Their eyes met over the table, and the noise of the restaurant, the happy chatter of its patrons, the Asian-flavored music, dropped away. Grissom shook his head just enough for her to see the movement, wordlessly pleading with her.
Their waitress came by just then, but neither one of them had any real appetite any longer. Catherine ordered some duck gyoza and sent the girl on her way.
Silence enveloped them again, until she pointed at the little piece of paper that had revealed itself after he decimated his cookie. "What does it say?"
Grissom opened it up with clumsy fingers. He read it first, and his sudden bark of laughter startled Catherine. He handed it to her.
"You learn something new every day."
Their waitress arrived with their order and found the table as quiet as it had been five minutes earlier. She set the plate down and left.
The delicious scent knocked Catherine out of her shock. "I feel like I should have figured this out a long time ago. The curls…and her eyes before they changed. That little notch in her chin." She hesitated. "When did you know?"
Grissom stared at the steaming dumplings. "Too late."
She shook her head slightly, trying to make sense of it all. "Was it a one-time thing? Did she cheat on Nick?"
"No. It was my fault, Cath." The raw emotion in his voice surprised him. "I ruined everything. I ruined us." Moisture gathered in the creases of his eyes. "Or what was left of us."
She didn't force him to elaborate. After a minute had passed, Catherine took the cookie from her own glass and handed it to him. He looked up at her, puzzled. "Take it. You need all the help you can get."
Grissom broke the cookie in half and unfolded the strip of paper.
You are just beginning to live.
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To Be Continued
A/N: First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans. Everyone else, Happy Fourth Thursday in November. I'm sorry to have given you such an intense chapter on a holiday, but my reasoning was two-fold. One: I literally could not keep from fiddling with this chapter, and I was driving my beta, PhDelicious, insane with all the different versions I dumped into her mailbox. If I didn't post soon, she was going to start plotting my slow demise. And she's really smart; she could make it last for days. Two: I was hoping that most people would read this after stuffing themselves with turkey and dressing, and therefore be too sleepy and/or weighed down to come after me. Because I know what was revealed in this chapter is a little upsetting. But this is the story as I've been envisioning it all along. I hope I haven't turned anyone away, and that you'll come back next time. I really appreciate everyone's continued interest, enthusiasm, and constructive criticism.
Now go eat pie. Lots and lots of pie. There is nothing that cannot be made better by the addition of pie.