Thank you all for the reviews! Love reading your encouraging words. :)

Bare with me though these next few chapters, I know the early seasons when Grissom is oblivious is no ones favorite, but it is important to their story.

Enjoy!

October 2001

Grissom stood outside the crime scene pacing back and forth. Two fingers pressed against his neck to check his pulse. His breathing finally starting to slow down. There were few times Grissom could recall himself getting visibly agitated at a scene. Losing control was not something he was used to, nor happy with.

"You Okay?" Her voice was soft and her approach gentle.

"95." He responded quickly.

"Excuse me?"

"Normally my pulse is 70. When it gets to 95 I realize how mad I am. I have 10 people working around the clock on this thing. " His speech was rapid and she could sense the unease in his eyes.

"You're too hard on herself."

"No-No! I'm not mad at me! There's a body in there at that guy knows where it is!"

"What's your pulse at now?" She smirked, looking back up at him. He sighed deeply. "You want to take a walk around the block? Get some air?"

"No." his voice softened.

"Clear your head."

"I'm fine."

"Okay." She looked at the man before her. Sara had been in Vegas for exactly one year now—give or take a crime scene. She had indeed learned a lot, like promised. But her life wasn't where she expected it to be. She found it difficult to make friends, and she had no life outside of work. She knew why though. In San Francisco, while she devoted the majority of her time to work, she still had a few close friends outside of the lab halls. Ones that would pull her out of the darkness and remind her that the sun still shines even when she can't see it. But in Vegas—she came to Vegas for two things: Grissom and to learn. Both were technically work related.

She continued to look at him. His head strung down, looking at his own feet. She had tried tirelessly over the last year to push down her feelings for him. But she could not. Suddenly, the urge to touch him took over.

Her hand founds its way to his cheek, cupping it while softly brushing her thumb over his skin. The sudden sensation of her skin on him forced him to look up with a start, staring deep into her eyes. Confusion evident.

"Chalk, from plaster." She offered with a smile and a shrug but he knew what she was really doing. And it had worked. Her compassionate touch had comforted him instantly. He could feel his heart beat slow to normal. He automatically raised his hand up and touched the part of his face Sara had just touched, perhaps trying to hold onto that feeling just a moment longer.

"Better get washed up." She smiled and sidestepped to leave him outside alone again. Grissom closed his eyes briefly, keeping her face in his sight. He had seen this compassion from her before, but It had never been so intimately directed at him.

Once they were all finished up, Grissom sat in his car before leaving the crime scene. He took a deep breath in and exhaled. He could still feel Sara's warmth on his cheek. He shook his head to try and rid himself of the thoughts that followed. Another sigh.

He watched from his car as she joked about something with Nick across the street. She punched his arm playfully before getting into her Tahoe and peeling off.

Sara is off limits. He reminded himself. He knew how all of his female quests had turned out in the past. Awkward beginning, followed by a few dates, shared meals and company before finally they couldn't play second fiddle to the job anymore, or he decided they were taking up to much of his thoughts. And then what? They wouldn't be able to escape each other, he was her supervisor after all.

He stopped in his thought tracks. Her supervisor. Of course nothing could happen between them. It would be the ultimate career suicide. Worse, he mused, then how poorly he played office politics.

He decided right then that he could not work with her anymore. He couldn't trust himself to keep away. Catherine would be a fine mentor, he mused. Maybe without her around, he could think more clearly on his cases.

At first, he did it sparingly. Pairing Sara up with he and nick together. But over time, he found it easy to pass her off to Catherine. He admittedly missed working side by side with her at first, but over time, it became easier to work without her. To see her only when administrative issues were raised. Before he knew it, it had been months since they'd worked closely together. In fact, so much time had passed that Grissom quickly forgot why he couldn't trust himself around her. It would be December before they worked a case together again, a fact that was not lost on Sara.

December 2001

They rode to the crime scene together in Grissom's Denali. Body found in the middle of a field, at least a 45 min drive from the lab.

The car was silent for the first 10 minutes or so. Sara's head racing with things she'd like to say just to fill the silence. Each time she went to open her mouth, she thought better of it and quickly retreated. She looked over at him, his hair seamed to be getting whiter and he had gained a little weight. The bags under his eyes made it clear that he hadn't been sleeping much either.

"I feel like I haven't seen you in a while." She finally said, keeping her gaze on him.

"Hm." Was all he offered.

"We haven't worked a case together in months." Her matter-of-fact tone brought Grissom back to why that was.

"I guess not."

Silence fell upon them again.

"This will be nice."

He glanced back in her direction, "It will." His eyes lingered a little longer than he meant to let them before he turned his attention back to the road. Her presence was intoxicating to him, and he was quickly remembering why he distance himself in the first place. He regained control of his thoughts as they pulled up to the scene. Brass was already there waiting for them.

The next few months seemed to fly by. Grissom felt he was doing a good job of working alongside Sara without letting his mind to succumb to the temptations of thinking of her in unprofessional manors. But if he had bothered to consider her or her feelings, he'd realize that opposite was happening.

Grissom's unorthodox supervising methods were weighing their toll on the young CSI. He was short, uncommunicative and widely absent when needed. She had even tried to confront him on the subject a few times but it was clear that he'd rather not make the time to speak with her. He continually dodged meeting requests, passing questions in the halls. Even stopping by his office wasn't working. He always found an excuse to leave. This isn't working.

Then, the straw the broke the camel's back.

February 2002

"So this is your experiment hu?" Sara walked into the room to find Grissom hunched over the table with a magnifying glass. Studying the flies on a piece of meat intensely.

"So because you found beef in the wound tracks of the victim, you think the meat might be from one of the body farm cows?"

"Did the fly find the beef in the wound and lay its eggs? Or did it bring the beef with it?

"I did an experiment similar to this in San Francisco, except the cross contamination was blood. It wasn't a murder case, but it was instructional.

"None of these beef particles are as big as the beef we found in Mike Kimble's wound track." Grissom straightened himself out and made some notes on the case folder. Sara followed, moving a little closer to him, not even really realizing she was.

"And..." Grissom continued, "I found out the ex-husband is the proud owner of a registered handgun."

"Hm, what does that mean?"

"Means I need to see that gun." He turned to walk away, only stopping in his track as she spoke.

"Um, Grissom? Aren't you going to tell me anything?"

"About?"

"The case... the meat, what you found..."

"I'm working it." His speech short and a little impatient. Grissom hadn't realized it, but the way in which he was distancing himself from Sara was effecting their working relationship to the point where their once flawless teamwork was unrecognizable.

"I thought I was working it with you." The hurt in her voice evident, even to him. But he didn't stop to think about it.

"Yes. You're right, you are." He paused, unsure where to leave things before gesturing back to his experiment, "So... take some photos of the expirement for the DA and then, uh... get rid of that stuff."

"That meat? The raw meat? Me?"

"Yeah." Grissom sighed internally. What's the problem now.

"How many meals have we shared together?" She was smiling but he new it was just to mask whatever pain he had just caused her.

"I don't know."

"Take a guess, over a year working together."

Hadn't it already been a year, he wondered. "30." He played along.

"I'm a vegetarian. Everyone here knows I'm a vegetarian. I haven't eaten meat since we stayed up that nigh with the pig. It pains me to see ground beef, forget about cleaning it up."

"Okay... have nick do it!" He thought his suggestion with let this interaction end, but the look on her face told him otherwise.

Sara was left in the room alone, with the sound of flies swarming the ground beef. A deep anger sparked within her. What was she doing in Vegas? It had been over a year and she realized that she could have climbed the ranks quicker and learned more with Dave in SF then she was here. Did she really uproot her life for him? A man she had only spent two days with, clearly knowing nothing about him. She felt stupid in that moment. Realizing that she had become one of the girls she had always laughed at, the girl who put herself second to an infatuation with a boy. That was it. She thought. She'll no longer let herself take second place here.

Later that day, she made her way to Grissom's office. Leaning against the door frame, she watched as he read the paper she left on his desk. Finally, she made her presence known.

"What is this?"

"It's uh, just what it says." Sara took a few steps into his office. "It's a request for leave of absence. Six months, year maybe."

"Why." His tone was cold and short. A complete contrast to her current one—soft and gentle. She was clearly at peace with this decision.

"I was thinking of checking out the federal government system—FBI..."

Grissom laughed her off, "We have the best lab in the country." His high horse attitude evident and unwelcome by Sara.

"I need a different work environment."

"What does that mean?"

"One with um, communication...respect."

"Everybody here respects you."

"You don't." She quipped back quickly. Her words stuck through him like a knife. What could she possibly mean by this? And then, as if an internal epiphany, The ground beef?

"Is this about that hamburger thing?" But with her next words, he would come to regret his.

"No. Grissom... This is not about that hamburger thing. I—I can't believe you. How can you reduce everything I've said to some kind of single quirk." Her patience wore thin now. "You think the problem here is just about me? If you don't sign my leave," She softened, "I'm going to have to quit.

She waited and watched as he battled with what to say. Her face was angry, the knowledge that it was his fault made it worse. She turned to leave.

"Hey Sara!" He called after her, causing her to turn on her heels. He took a deep breath before smiling, "The lab needs you here." But her face and subsequent absence in his doorway told him not to be so proud of in conjured words—they clearly weren't what she wanted to hear.