He can hear the ringing in his ears and he feels the aches and pains that would come with being thrown backwards by a bomb blast. He can't believe that they fell for it, this guy was clearly never going to give up Nick and now they had to try and identify him as well if they had any hope of finding Nick alive.

"Gil?" Sara asks him again and waves her hand in his face. "Gil?"

"Hi." Grissom finally looks up and sees her stood in front of him looking concerned

"Are you ok?" She asks and he meets her eyes and sees genuine concern reflected in them.

"I'm fine." He tells her.

"Normally when one of us says that we're lying" He can't help but agree with her. "What do you need?"

You. He thinks but he doesn't express that thought "I need you to look at what's left of the body and someone needs to gather what's left of Sam Braun's cash."

"Ok." She looks like she wants to say more but they both know it's not the time or the place.

"Later." He looks at her and offers her a weak smile and she nods and walks away.

"Getting blown up." Grissom looks up at this new voice "One way to get your wife to talk to you again." Jim offers him a hand to pull him off where he's sat on the step at the back of the ambulance. "Come on, we're not going to find Nick sat down."

Grissom allows himself to be pulled up and off the ambulance.

… … … … … …

The relief he feels is immense as he watches the lights of the ambulance fading into the distance. Ecklie has walked away after his demands to have his guys back and Jim had lead Greg off to give Grissom and Sara some space. "He's going to be ok." Sara tells Grissom softly and reaches out and brushes her hand against his.

"Yeah." Grissom agrees and he turns to look at her "Are you ok?"

She shrugs and looks back at him "I've only been near one explosion tonight not two." Sara frowns "You should go to the hospital and get checked."

"I'm fine" He tries "We've got work to do."

"Actually Ecklie called Days in to come process this." Brass joins them again. "You should listen to Sara." He squeezes Sara's shoulder and mumbles something about giving Sanders a ride back to the lab.

"Please Gil." Her pleading tone breaks him and he nods and allows her to load him into a Denali and drive him to the hospital. She steers him into a waiting room chair and grabs the paperwork to book him in from the receptionist at the desk.

He leans over and watches her fill in his personal details. "You." He mumbles when she gets to the part of the form about his next of kin.

"Not your mom?" She bites her lip and looks at him, this truce that they have whilst they wait for news on Nick can't last forever and they're going to have to talk at some point.

"You're my wife Sara." He tells her firmly and it surprises her. She just nods and fills in her personal details and hands the paperwork in and sits next to Grissom again. They don't say anything and just sit in a slightly awkward silence until Grissom is called for his exam.

"I'm going to go see if I can get an update on Nick." Sara tells him and he doesn't say anything before following the nurse that called him.

She goes back to the desk "I'm looking for a friend of mine Nicholas Stokes." The receptionist clicks on their computer before telling Sara that Nick is in trauma and directs her to the waiting room where she finds Catherine and Warrick. "Hey, any news?"

"He's going to be fine." Catherine doesn't look up from her cold cup of hospital coffee. "His parents are in there with him now. Are you here to process him?"

She lets out a breath that she didn't realise she'd been holding in. "No, someone from days will be doing that. Ecklie pulled Grave and Swing from this one now. I'm just here to force Grissom to get checked out properly."

"How'd you manage that?" Warrick laughed

"I told him I'd come get an update on Nick." It's the truth but it's not the reason why she was able to get Grissom to the hospital.

"The injuries are superficial but the rest…" Warrick can't bring himself to say it and Sara just nods. She knows they all know, it's not the physical scars that Nick's going to have to live with.

"Give him a hug from me when they let you in to see him. I've got to go update Grissom." She accepts hugs from both Warrick and Catherine and goes back to the ER and sits in the waiting area and waits for Grissom.

"Mrs Grissom?" A guy in scrubs comes over and finds Sara dozing in a chair "Your husband is asking for you."

It's the first time anyone has called her Mrs Grissom, not even her husband it feels weird. "Sure." She pulls back the curtain and walks into the cubicle "Hey."

"Hi" He looks up at her and offers a smile. "I'm fine. Really, clean bill of health."

She nods "Good. Nick's going to be ok. His parents are with him, injuries are mostly superficial. Do you want to go visit him?"

Grissom nods and then looks over at her "Then I'd like to go home." Sara turns her head towards him at his words "With you." He adds at the end.

… … … … … …

Hank goes crazy when they finally walk into Grissom's house and he sees Sara he starts jumping all over her and covering her in slobbery kisses "He missed you." Grissom smiles for what feels like the first time in hours as Sara laughs at the dog's attention. "I missed you as well." She stands and looks and he just shrugs. "I don't understand why we were fighting."

"Gil…" She starts and Hank starts cry and they both realise he probably needs to pee and she lets him out into the front yard. "I'm tired."

Grissom frowns, he's not sure what he was expecting when he got her home but in his mind he just wanted things to go back to how they were before the fight. "I'm going to take Hank for a walk." He grabs the leash from where he'd left it by the door. "Please stay." He says without looking her in the eye and all Sara can do is nod.

He walks the dog who finally seems to have come back to life and is practically dragging Grissom along behind him as they take their usual walk as fast as they can so they can get back home to Sara, it would usually annoy Grissom but he's inclined to agree with Hank on this one. They get home and Grissom is initially worried when Sara doesn't respond to him calling her name but then finds her fast asleep on the couch. He'd hoped to talk but he realises he's as tired as she is so, instead he settles for gently waking her up. "Sara, honey." Brown eyes meet blue "Lets go to bed." She's too tired to argue with him and allows him to pull her off the couch and lead her to bed.

She's not too tired to realise that Hank is following them as well and that once they've both climbed into the bed Hank has jumped up and curled up at the foot of the bed. "Gil?"

"Yeah?"

"I though Hank wasn't allowed in the bed."

"Go to sleep Sara. We'll talk more later."

… … … … … …

"Good morning." He slides a cup of coffee over to her as Sara walks into the kitchen the following morning. "How did you sleep?"

"I've slept for nearly half a day and I'm still tired." She tells him having been shocked to realise that she'd slept just over 10 hours. "We have to go back to work soon and I was hoping for chance to see Nick before work."

"I was hoping we'd talk." Grissom says instead and Sara just closes her eyes, she was not ready for this. "What happened Sara?"

She sips her coffee before cautiously saying "I heard you with Jim." He just looks confused at what she thinks she heard. "You sounded frustrated that I was over all the time. You said it's like I don't even have my own place and that I'm always around."

He remembers the conversation. "I asked you to move in with me."

"After I talked about breaking up." When did she talk about breaking up? He can't remember.

He thinks and then says cautiously. "I was frustrated." He notes the look of panic in her eyes "That you hadn't given me an answer about moving in." She doesn't say anything and suddenly he finds a bit of courage "You're always here, until the last week it had been over a month since you spent the night at your place. You hadn't spent the night there since that night at Desert State."

"Gil, it still sounds like..." The groan from Grissom cuts you off.

"No. Sara, honey." He rubs his face in his hands "I want you here." He decides at this point honesty is the best policy here. "How could you think I didn't want you here?"

"I mean you did say it." She mumbles into her now lukewarm coffee as she takes a sip and he laughs when he realises that she's right.

"I didn't mean it." He tells her sincerely and then remembers what prompted the argument in the first place. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too." She downs the rest of her coffee and starts playing with the coffee cup which Grissom recognises as a sign that she's uncomfortable with what she's about to stay something that she's not comfortable with. "I grew up in the foster system."

"I know."

"There's two types of foster parents. The ones that care and the ones that care about pay, I was worth $400 a month back then, it's about $700 dollars in todays money. The ones that got paid decided quickly that I wasn't worth the money and the ones that cared, well they're far and few between. I was a pay check to a lot of people, I spent years being invited in but not really wanted."

Grissom feels his heart break, he always thought he'd be the ones with the insecurities in the relationship but he realises that Sara has her own as well. "You're wanted here Sara." Is the only thing he can think to say to her. "Move in with me?"

It's completely inappropriate to ask at that point but it's so Grissom. "Really, even with all my damage?"

"Please." He looks at her and she laughs and nods. "Good. It's settled."

He stands and kisses her for the first time in a week and he keeps kissing her as he leads her back towards the bedroom remembering at the last minute to kick the dog out of the room.

… … … … … …

Grissom hands Sara a cup of coffee and offers her a smile which she returns before focusing on the briefing. The moment hadn't gone unnoticed by Greg, who is happy things seems to be going back to their weird version of normal.