Disclaimer: I don't own CSI, etc.

A/N: Sorry for the long break in updates...I got caught up in a new story.

Thanks for all the reviews! I should have another chapter up tomorrow, I think. I hope.

Enjoy! :)


Chapter 12: Breakfast

Nick and Warrick were close—so I should have assumed that inviting Nick to join our weekly breakfasts would result in Warrick's eventual involvement as well. He wasn't as open as Nick and Greg—a little more reserved, a little more like me—but he was genuinely difficult to dislike. He had an easy smile, eyes that begged you to trust, and a kind soul… you could just tell.

The problem was that now that it was becoming a group affair, they were talking about our breakfasts openly in the locker room… on cases… waiting for evidence… which wasn't bad—it wasn't a secret—but it could only be a matter of time before others came along…

And, of course, Catherine invited herself within a week of Warrick being invited. But that might just be because she wanted him almost as much as she still wanted her ex-husband. Almost as much as I still wanted Grissom.

Regardless, she was not easy, like the men on the team, with whom I had slipped into a simple, uncomplicated camaraderie. She was difficult, and opinionated, and did not like to share the attention of the men on the team. I didn't view them as men in the way she did—and she clearly did—but I certainly didn't want to sit in the corner of the booth and eat my breakfast sausage in silence while she dominated a tradition that Greg and I had started and had not invited her to join, despite how fervently Greg flirted with her.

So the breakfasts were bound to be rocky, at least at first. I figured that with Catherine, his blonde, and Warrick, his favorite, it was only a matter of time before Grissom started frequenting the diner with us. He was less social with the team than he had been, one-on-one, with me… but I wasn't wrong.

At the end of a particularly long shift—long and trying—Warrick says to the unusually crowded locker room that we should have breakfast, even though it isn't our normal morning, simply because he doesn't want to go home yet. The word 'alone' is implied, though he doesn't say it aloud. Nick jumps on it, enthusiastically patting my shoulder as he hurries out of the room to ask Greg if he wants to come, and Catherine—with a highly unnecessary hair toss—makes some comment about Lindsey and Eddie and her mother which I am far too tired to hear, and agrees to go.

Apparently my participation is tacitly assumed, because Warrick smiles gently at the pair of us and suggests we ask Grissom to go. My eyebrows rise, but Catherine enthuses over it, saying that he hasn't gone out for breakfast with the team since before Holly. She flounces away to invite him, leaving a realization in her wake that I can't help but be swept up in—Grissom had not gone out for breakfast with them since I came to Vegas.

I sigh, wondering at how my move had pushed us further apart. Prior to living in Vegas, we had called each other… spoke often, about safe topics, yes, but it was better than nothing. Now that I'm here, it feels like we can't even do that. That he doesn't want to do that.

Maybe it's my fault. I had insisted on calling him Grissom… occasionally flaunted my relationship with Greg because I knew it bothered him… maybe I had burned my bridges. But… that wasn't an acceptable situation. Whatever else I knew about my life, I knew that I never wanted to screw up Grissom and I's relationship so badly that we couldn't even be friends.

When Catherine returns to tell us that Grissom and Greg had both agreed to go, I draw in a deep, steadying breath. If I had burned bridges, I would rebuild them.

We were seated in a wrap-around booth that did not comfortably seat six—as I was the last in the line of CSIs moving through the diner, I ended up in a chair on the end. This really wouldn't have been bad, but the booth itself was raised higher than the floor, but there was no room for a chair on the platform. And I was right in the primary path taken from the kitchen to the majority of the patrons. After the third time I had to stand to allow a waitress with an overflowing tray pass me, and the second time someone trying to sneak around my chair elbowed me in the head, Nick had had enough.

"Sara, come sit up here. We'll all scoot together, really." At this he looks to the others and they shuffle closer to allow me the space to sit. The available spot is next to Greg, but he's getting a death look from Grissom for how close he's scooted against the older man.

"Sorry Griss, she won't have any room otherwise…" Grissom raises an eyebrow, and Greg becomes visibly smaller under his gaze.

Warrick chuckles, offering the most awkward of solutions. "Put Sara between you two if you don't want to be rubbing man-elbows."

Nick, Catherine, and even Greg laugh—Grissom does not, but he seems less opposed to my proximity than Greg's. I slide in, and am promptly sandwiched between the only two men I'd slept with in the last… seven years. How nice.

I bite my bottom lip in apprehension as the conversation picks up around us—something about a school thing Lindsey was doing—shoulder to shoulder to shoulder with the pair of them. Greg shifts, uncomfortable, and ends up putting his arm over my seat back, just to allow more breathing room between us. His fingers brush Grissom's shoulder, however, and then his hand shoots back like he's been burned, hitting me in the back of the head in the process.

I wince. Damn it, that's getting annoying. I feel myself longing for the days in which I had an entire side of a booth to myself, back when only Greg and I—Gi—Grissom's hand is on my knee. Oh god, his hand is on my knee.

I nearly gasp out loud. It's a gentle, non-sexual sort of touch… meant to apologize, silently and discreetly, for being the cause of Greg's clumsiness and the subsequent pounding in my head. Still though, it makes my heart race… I look intently at my water glass, trying to focus… to not give away the effect it's having on me… and then there's a hand on my other knee.

A smaller hand, and not nearly as warm.

I literally jump at the realization and smack Greg's hand away angrily—because his had not been an apology… his hand had already been inching upwards. "Greg!"

He chuckles, moving his hand above the table and shaking it, as if that would stop the stinging. "Ow, Sara, you didn't have to hit me so hard!" He whines playfully and I let out an exasperated sigh.

"Then keep your hands to yourself!"

He grins, and I knew before he can open his mouth that he's going to comment on our foolish, foolish night of passion. He has a playful glint in his eyes that I recognize from his earlier teasing, and my eyes are wide as he draws a breath to speak. I dig the nails of my left hand into his leg, trying to silence him… and forgetting that he's extremely ticklish.

He laughs and squirms and nearly falls out of the booth, making it far too obvious that I've touched him—in what looks like a playful manner. I'm left with my right knee cold, three pairs of eyes glued to me, one pair still shut tightly in laughter, and the final pair… averted.

There's a tightness to his lips as he drinks his coffee in silence, and I can't decipher what he's thinking. I feel like I used to be able to do that…decipher his thoughts from his facial expressions… but not in Vegas. He's more guarded, here.

I laugh, belatedly, to shrug off their eyes and questions, and then the food arrives. They stop staring, but the interaction hangs over the table like a fog that only Greg is apparently unaware of. I take the opportunity to place a hand on Grissom's knee, to reassure him, but he moves his leg out from under my grasp almost roughly, punishing me for what must have looked like flirting… but wasn't. It really, honestly, wasn't.

The rest of the breakfast is quiet. I had been thinking, when it first started, that Greg and I would have to find a new tradition, just the two of us, because I was overwhelmed in the large group… but right now, I'm not sure I ever want to see Greg again. It's overdramatic of me, but I feel as though every time we move forward, something happens to fling us further backwards… and its heart wrenching to endure, over and over.

As soon as half of us finish, I pull a twenty from my purse and set it on the table, the edge tucked under my plate, my left elbow nudging Greg adamantly to get him to let me out of the booth. "Well, this, uh… was… fun." My voice says that it has been anything but, and I struggle to brighten it. "We'll do it again next week, yeah? See you guys later!"

And I sweep from the diner, so tired of this whole Vegas thing. I miss my apartment in Berkeley, and I miss working in a lab in which I'm not constantly walking on egg shells. I miss the ocean, I miss the hills and the greenery and the early morning fogs… and I miss the difficult friendship with Gi-Grissom that I've lost. Vegas just isn't… home.