AN: Posting a day early since I won't have time tomorrow, hope nobody minds!
Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter – it was really interesting reading everyone's theories on what kept Grissom away! I can say that nobody actually got it right, though… but a few of them were intriguing, and I decided to work them into the story in a different way (you'll see in chapter 6)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to CSI
Chapter 3
The next time Sara opens her eyes, she feels like she's hungover after a night out, her head pounding and her body heavy. The first thing her still sleep-fuddled brain registers is the warm dog breath in her face.
"Hey, buddy," she rasps out without opening her eyes, reaching out to scratch Hank behind his ears. Her reward is a small whine, and she blinks sleep out of her eyes to focus on the clock on the bedside table.
A few minutes after seven – she's been asleep for almost ten hours straight. Which she needed, obviously, but she can't even remember the last time it happened. And it means her poor dog hasn't been out all day.
"I'm sorry, bud, give me a moment."
As if he understands her, Hank trots out the door. The benefit of collapsing into bed fully clothed is that she doesn't need to get dressed, so after a quick bathroom stop, she's at the front door and clipping Hank's leash onto his collar.
They just go to the small greenspace across the street, instead of the larger park a block over, and luckily, Hank's quick about his business, so they're back at the house ten minutes later.
Sara refills Hank's water bowl and gives him his dinner before collapsing on the couch. The headache is getting better, but she still feels wrung out, or maybe stretched too thin. Like she's nothing but sharp edges, and just the slightest bump would push her over the edge again, make her shatter into a million pieces.
For once, she's glad she has the night off, because it means she doesn't have to leave the house except to take Hank for another quick bathroom break across the street, which means no risk of running into Grissom. At least, she's pretty sure he won't just show up at her door again. And even if he does, now she knows to check the peep hole and just won't open.
But the doorbell remains quiet, and she spends her night on the couch, forcing her mind to focus on the stack of forensic journals she hasn't gotten around to reading in the last few months. It doesn't work, of course, her mind straying to her conversation with Grissom every few minutes.
How dare he say that she didn't fight for them? What was she supposed to do, fly across the country and confront him? Beg him to come back to her? Act like the clingy girlfriend who couldn't survive without him? Oh, he would have absolutely loved that, she's sure.
When she realizes she's actually hungry for the first time in days, she orders pizza and garlic bread from her favorite place. Maybe the confrontation at least knocked her out of her weird funk.
She eats until she can't get another bite down, and then she pulls a throw from the back of the couch over herself and stretches out before turning on the TV. Maybe some interesting documentary or stupid comedy will be better at keeping her attention from the person she doesn't want to think about.
Unfortunately, the first thing she comes across is a documentary about Monarch butterflies, which obviously isn't going to get the job done. She continues flipping through channels, and eventually settles on some stupid movie about a washed-out football player trying to put together a team of convicts in a prison.
Maybe it's the fact that her brain is still emotionally exhausted, but somehow, she manages to just vaguely follow the plot while thinking about absolutely nothing. She has no idea what happens in the movie and doesn't even notice that it's ended until the artificial smiles of infomercials fill the screen instead.
Even the thought of reaching for the remote on the coffee table is too much, so she just watches the over-enthusiastic people talking about kitchen appliances, garden supplies, and workout equipment guaranteed to give you a six-pack in no time.
At some point, she apparently falls asleep, because next thing she knows, the room is bathed in the mid-day sun, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are shooting people on the TV.
She reaches for the remote to turn the movie off before rolling onto her back with a groan. She's not entirely sure when she fell asleep, but it's already almost three, and it feels a little like the whole weekend has gotten away from her. Sure, she still has eight hours before she needs to be at the lab, but still.
Since Hank didn't wake her up with a gentle request to go outside, she takes the time to take a long, hot shower, which makes her feel a little more human, at least. Then she takes him out across the street again for a quick pee – with promises of a nice walk to the park later – and fills his bowls before leaving again to get the grocery shopping done.
When she gets home again, she starts a load of laundry and then prepares a large bowl of tuna salad, which will last her for a couple of days. Hank's wandered off for his second nap of the day, so she closes the door to the study before getting the vacuum out.
By the time she's done, it's just after seven, and Hank's pawing at the study door when she goes to let him out.
"OK, bud, let's go to the park, huh?"
At one of his favorite words, he lets out a happy bark and takes off for the front door. Sara follows at a more leisurely pace, grabbing a tote with some things they usually bring to the park on the way and filling a couple of bottles with water. Soon enough, though, they're out the door and on the way to the park.
The temperature has started sinking a little, but it's still a mid-September evening in Las Vegas, so it's way too hot. Hank starts panting half-way to the park, so they take things slow and pause for a breather in the shade of a large tree when they get there. Sara gets Hank's travel bowl out and fills it with water, and he happily laps it up.
The park's pretty much deserted, so she unclips Hank's leash and extracts a tennis ball from the tote, making him perk up immediately.
"You want to play fetch, huh?" He barks excitedly and she throws the ball as far as she can, laughing as he takes off after it.
It's on Hanks fourth chase of the ball that it happens. What it is, exactly, she's not completely sure, since her phone vibrated just as she threw the tennis ball and she's reading a text from Greg. There's some sort of commotion, a brief shriek, and when she straightens up, there's a kid on the ground and Hank is sniffing excitedly at their foot.
Sara immediately jumps to her feet and hurries over. "Hank, no! Here!"
The dog reluctantly obeys, but the way he's still twitching at her side makes it obvious he wants to examine his new friend.
"Hey, kid, you OK?"
The child, which she now realizes is a girl – the pixie haircut threw her off initially – nods. She brushes the dirt off the knees of her tights and stands. Luckily, she doesn't look too upset, so hopefully they won't get an earful from some over-protective parent.
"It was my fault, I should have been looking where I was going," she says, offering a smile before turning her attention to Hank. "Is he nice? Can I pet him?"
It's about the last thing Sara was expecting – granted, she doesn't have much experience with kids, and even less with kids and Hank together, but she did bring him to Nick's fourth of July celebration a couple of months ago, and Nick's eleven-year-old niece was absolutely terrified, refusing to come near him.
"Of course. He's really sweet, but pet him gently, OK?" She has a tight hold on Hank's collar, but now that the girl is coming closer, he's stopped struggling and started wagging his tail.
She smiles at the dog, running a hand over his head before scratching behind his ears. "Good boy, good boy. What's his name?"
"Hank."
"Sam!"
Woman and child both look up at the loud voice, and Sara almost loses her hold on Hank's collar when she spots the owner of it.
"Grissom?"
"It's OK, Dad, I asked first, he's nice!" the girl hurries to say, and, well, that's it – Sara's grip slackens, and Hank bounds off towards his former master.
Who just laughs when the dog jumps up at him, trying to lick him in the face. He used to hate it when Hank did that.
"Down, boy," he chuckles, leaning down to scratch Hank in that spot behind his left ear that makes him go into full-on bliss mode as soon as all four feet are back on the ground. As usual, it takes about five seconds before the dog flops onto his back. "I bet he'd love it if you scratched his belly."
It takes a moment before Sara realizes he's talking to the kid – his kid? What the hell is going on here?
The girl drops to her knees without hesitation and Hank's tongue lolls out of his mouth when she starts rubbing his belly with both hands.
Sara can feel Grissom's eyes on her but resolutely ignores him until he steps closer. She jumps a little at the first touch of his hand on her elbow, but relaxes when he just guides her to a bench some ways away. She sits down as close to the edge of it as she can and hears him sigh as he joins her.
"You want to explain what's going on here?" she asks after a long, silent moment, keeping her voice low enough their conversation won't carry over to the kid.
"I think you've probably figured it out," he just replies, and she bites back her irritation.
"She's yours?"
"Yeah."
"How old is she?"
"Eight. And a half, apparently that's important."
She takes a moment to consider the implications of that. She would have been born during Sara's first spring in Vegas.
"And you just… never mentioned her?"
"Or course not, how can you think that?" He pauses, as if waiting for a response, but she doesn't know what to say. "I didn't know. I only found out about her about two and a half years ago."
It's not hard to connect the dots on that one.
"She's the reason you didn't come back?"
"Yeah."
"So, you figured no explanation and disappearing out of my life was better than 'hey, guess what? I have a kid I never knew about'?"
"Sara…"
"I have to go," she says, standing abruptly. "Hank, come on."
The dog lifts his head to look at her, but that's about it, so she goes over and clips the leash to his collar.
"You can't stay a little longer?"
Sara looks up at the question, finding two very familiar blue eyes, the eyebrows above them furrowed. She feels bad, breaking up their little playdate, but she just needs to wrap her mind around all of this.
She does manage to smile at the kid. She hasn't done anything wrong, after all. "Sorry, Hank has to go home and eat before I take him to the sitter."
The girl frowns. "He has a babysitter?"
"Well, a dogsitter," Sara amends. "When I'm at work."
"But it's Sunday. And it's seven thirty."
The obvious confusion is kind of adorable. Kind of.
"I work nights," she explains. "And not Monday through Friday like a lot of people."
"Why do you…"
"Sam!" Grissom's voice interrupts. "Come on, stop it with the twenty questions and let Sara and Hank go home."
The girl pouts, but leans down to rub Hank's ears one last time. "Bye, Hank." Then she straightens up and gives Sara a curious look before turning to Grissom. "You're Sara?"
It seems odd to not direct the question at her, but Sara still answers. "Yeah…"
"Sam…" Grissom says, his tone a warning, for some reason she can't figure out.
The girl turns back to Sara and holds out her hand with a smile. "It was nice to meet you."
Sara can't help but return the smile, despite the slight confusion of the whole situation – the words sound rehearsed, and probably are. "It was nice to meet you too… Sam."
Sam flashes a smile and then darts past her, and Sara resists the urge to look over her shoulder as she tugs on Hank's leash and starts on the walk home.
Her head is spinning, trying to make sense of the situation, but it just won't align in her mind. So he found out he had a kid, why would that mean staying at Williams? And if so, why is he back now? And where's the kid's mom?
She desperately wants to talk to someone about the whole thing, but unfortunately, her options are pretty much Greg, Brass, or Catherine, all of which are – or at least were – Grissom's friends too, and furious as she is, she can't just tell them. Can she? If he wanted them to know, he would have just told them as soon as he got back, wouldn't he?
By the time she's back at the house, her head is pounding painfully, and she downs a couple of Tylenol with a big glass of water. Staying at home is just not an option, though, so she texts the dog sitter to make sure it's OK to drop Hank off early – which is, of course, not a problem – and quickly scarfs down some of the tuna salad she made earlier before changing into work clothes.
By the time Greg knocks on the doorjamb to the print lab, where she's scrolling through the hits on the many prints from her and Nick's flour-embellished crime scene, she's already been working for three hours.
"Hey, I heard you were early today," he says when she looks up. "Want to talk about it?"
"About coming in early?" Sara deliberately misunderstands him, turning back to the computer screen. "I do it all the time. Ask Catherine – she's already threatening to limit me to the lab and we're only two weeks into September. I was just bored after being off last night."
The swing shift tech took off a few minutes ago, so she's alone in the room. Greg glances down the hallway and then steps into the lab, closing the door behind him.
"Nick also told me that you kind off bolted from the break room yesterday," he continues, voice gentle, making her bristle. "He figured it probably had something to do with the mention of a certain lady… he's sorry, by the way, he didn't mean to upset you."
"He didn't," Sara objects stubbornly.
"OK, he didn't mean to involuntarily start a conversation that let Grissom upset you."
"Again, I wasn't upset." He doesn't say anything, just pulls up a chair and studies her closely for a long moment. "Stop it," she says when she can't stand it any longer.
He sighs. "I just want you to talk to me."
"What do you want me to say?" she snaps. "That I was pissed he went to see her before me? Fine, I was. I was even more pissed when he showed up at my door and told me he lied, that he hasn't seen her, hasn't even talked to her, since before he left."
For once, Greg looks caught off guard. "Why would he do that?"
"That's what I wanted to know too. And you want to know what he said?" She doesn't wait for a response. "That he wanted to hurt me, for not fighting for him. Can you believe that?"
"Seriously?" He looks almost as furious as she was. "Where the hell does he get off saying that to you?"
"Hell if I know."
"I hope you kicked him out."
"Obviously."
"No wonder you're having a crappy day." He leans back in the chair and runs a hand over his eyes. "Drinks after shift? I think you've earned a few hours of oblivion. Or we could go egg his house, I bet HR has his new address."
"No to the drinks," Sara replies, smiling at his offer despite herself. "And to the egging. We're not in middle school."
"You're right, that is juvenile." He considers for a moment. "Slash his tires? I already told you I'd key his car if you want, but the offer still stands. Oh, we could get Archie to hack his email account and sign him up for a bunch of dating sites with weird bios. And there's always the classic – bag of burning poop at his door. Though considering you nixed the egging idea, I doubt you'll go for that."
"I'm good, but thanks."
"OK. As long as you promise to come to me with any future revenge needs."
She lets out a laugh. "I promise."
"Who are we exacting revenge on?"
They both jump at Mandy's voice.
"Oh, uh, nobody!" Greg quickly replies. "We were just… talking about a movie."
"Uh huh." Mandy looks between them for a moment. "Fine, don't tell me. But I'll have you know that everyone at Tonopah High is still talking about the epic revenge I exacted on my boyfriend junior year after he cheated on me. So, you're missing out."
"What did you do?" Greg asks, sounding awed, and Sara decides it's time to go.
"Come on, shift's already started," she says, pulling him to his feet.
"Fine," he agrees reluctantly, wagging a finger at Mandy. "But I will be back for the full story."
Warrick's already leaving the break room when they get there. "How do you miss assignments when you're here three hours before shift starts?" he teases, dodging out of the way of Sara's elbow. "Greggo, you're with me, come on."
Greg throws a smile at her. "Call if you need me."
She rolls her eyes but then returns the smile. "I'm fine."
"I know. Still."
"Fine, I will. Happy?"
He offers a salute before turning to catch up with Warrick, and Sara enters the break room.
It's Riley's night off, so it's just Nick and Catherine waiting for her. "Hey, Sara," Catherine greets her. "Nick's running the lead on your robbery with Brass, but you're with me today, we have a double in Spring Valley. I'll be in the car when you're ready."
"OK," Sara replies, turning to Nick. "You need something on the case?"
He shakes his head with a frown. "No, I think I have it all under control. I just… I wanted to apologize. For yesterday morning."
"It's fine," she assures him.
"No, it's not," he insists. "I shouldn't have said anything. I just… sometimes I forget that you guys… not that I know you… I mean…
"Nick!" she cuts him off. "It's fine. Did I get a little upset? Yeah. But you don't have to… walk on eggshells around me. I'm… working through it, OK?"
"You know you can talk to me, right?" he asks. "You don't even have to explain anything you don't want to, OK? Just… if you need me, I'm here."
"I know," Sara tells him, a little touched. She can't remember the last time she had so many people looking out for her.
"So, we're good?"
"We're good."
"Then come here." He opens his arms and gestures at her to come closer. "Come on, we need to hug it out."
"We really don't," she argues, but she still steps into his embrace. And it's nice, his strong arms tight around her.
Why couldn't she fall for a guy like Nick? Things would be so much easier…
"OK, yeah, I needed that," she admits when she pulls away.
"Told you. Now get going, before Cath comes looking for you."
The week is pretty uneventful. No bug cases means no Grissom at the lab, and when Sara finally works up the courage to take Hank back to the park on Wednesday, he's not there, which is kind of anticlimactic.
She tells herself she's glad, that she didn't want to see him, but she doesn't even believe it herself. If nothing else, she was expecting him to give her a couple of days to calm down and then get in touch to try to explain the whole kid situation, but maybe she doesn't even warrant an explanation…
She feels like a teenager with her first crush again, alternating between wanting the cute boy at school to ask her out and feeling like the biggest loser in history when she sees him flirting with one of the popular girls.
She's just gotten home on Thursday morning when her cell phone rings, an unknown number on the display. It looks vaguely familiar, but she can't quite place it.
"Sidle."
"Sara?"
Right, she forgot that she deleted his number. Or, technically, Greg deleted it when he dragged her out to a bar a few weeks after they found out Grissom wasn't coming back. He claimed she needed to get drunk and vent, to get some closure, and it had honestly felt good, to be able to talk about it with someone.
And, apparently, the final, cleansing act was deleting his number.
"So you don't drunk dial him," Greg explained. "Because, come on, it's not like you know his number by heart or anything."
Sara figured it was probably best to not tell him that she kind of did.
But apparently, she's almost forgotten it.
"What do you want?"
"I, uh… I was going to wait for you to call me, but I talked to Catherine, and she needs my help with a case tonight, so I just… I thought we should maybe talk before that."
Of course he was waiting for her to call him, she should have known.
"Well, I don't have your number anymore, so…"
"Oh." She doesn't think she's imagining the hurt in his voice. "I should have realized that, but I…"
Grissom trails off and she decides to take pity on him. "You wanted to talk?"
"Only if you do," he hurries to say. "I just… things were already awkward at the lab, and now… I don't want it to be even worse. Does that make sense?"
Of course it does, and she wants that too. Well, mostly.
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," she admits. "When were you thinking?"
"Does now work? I understand if you need to sleep, but it would be easier for me. I just dropped Sam off at school, and I don't have class until noon… but if this afternoon is better for you, that's fine, I'll… work something out."
"Now is fine," Sara hurries to assure him before he continues rambling.
"Are you sure? I don't want to inconvenience you." He pauses. "More than I already am."
"It's fine," she repeats. "Call if you can't find parking on the street and I'll open the garage."
"OK, I'll be there soon."
She hangs up and takes a deep breath. "You can do this." It does nothing to calm her nerves, of course.
She figures he probably won't be too long – considering they were at the park, they probably live nearby – which is good because it means she doesn't have time to clean the already clean house. She does, however, go into the bedroom to change from her jeans into a pair of more comfortable yoga pants, and, OK, check that there's no underwear anywhere but the hamper and dresser.
Not that he's going to be in the bedroom, but better safe than sorry.
She also saves Grissom's number in her contacts again, because the odds of him calling again seem higher than her getting drunk and calling him even though she shouldn't.
Hank seems to realize she's on edge, because instead of disappearing to the study when he's finished his breakfast, he joins her on the couch and puts his head in her lap.
"Sorry, buddy," she says, scratching behind his ears. "I've been a mess lately, huh? I promise to work on that."
Hank doesn't respond, of course, just closes his eyes. A few minutes later, his doggie snores fill the room, rumbling through her body.
They stop abruptly when the doorbell rings, and this time, the dog does bark and hurries up the stairs to inspect their visitor.
AN: So the cat's out of the bag, but Grissom's still got a lot of 'splainin to do…