A/N:
If you were thinking that being back at the house in Vegas might dredge up a painful memory or two for our two lovely science nerds, you'd be right. But then, you know, there's still a bit of fluff. đź’•
I will repeat some of my earlier sentiments: I agree—completely and utterly—that the divorce was a flaming dumpster fire, but I'm still trying to make canon work. 💛
I hope you enjoy the chapter! đź’›
Fall 2015. Las Vegas, Nevada.
Yes, you're lovely, with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft
There is nothing for me but to love you
And the way you look tonight
– Dorothy Fields, "The Way You Look Tonight."
"Oh, you're so sweet. And maybe […] you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said, "that's what I want too."
– Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
Funny Face
Sara and Grissom had resolved that their week or two back in Vegas (for they had no precise timeline for this escape they'd planned) would be spent, to the extent possible, seeing no one; doing nothing productive; and, preferably, mostly naked.
When Sara, Grissom, and Hank arrived in Vegas that afternoon, they went straight to Sara's house—Sara's house, which had once also been Grissom's house, too, though he had never fully lived there. They set up Hank's bed and dishes. Sara went through the fridge and her fruit bowl and chucked everything that had gone bad in the time she'd been away.
Next Sara and Grissom wrote a grocery list—well, technically, Grissom wrote the list. They'd decided relatively early on in their relationship that Sara wasn't allowed to write the lists. She wrote her lists in shorthand, which meant she had to read them out to him, and he always found this strangely alluring (although of course he found everything about her alluring). In short, he ended up wanting to jump her, and no groceries ever got purchased. So Grissom was in charge of writing the lists.
They had pledged to leave the house for practicalities as little as possible, so the grocery list was quite long. After dropping off their rental car, they headed together to the grocery store. At the store, they loaded up their cart, and they felt quite satisfied they were ready for the week or two ahead of them.
After they returned to the house, Sara put away the groceries (despite his best efforts, Grissom had never organized them to her liking), while Grissom wandered around the house that had once partially been his. It was hard to believe he'd been gone so long. He remembered his feeling in the lab, the old sentiment that one could never go home again. Yet here he was.
Grissom was examining the new West Elm couch Sara had finally bought, which coordinated quite nicely with the rest of the mid-century modern decor. Sara had finished putting away the groceries, and she came out of the spare room holding a stack of framed photos.
"Here." She handed them to him. "It got to a point where I couldn't look at them anymore, but it would be nice to have them back up for now. Just put them wherever you like." For this, Sara was willing to relinquish a small bit of control.
Grissom looked down at the stack of photos of himself and Sara that he was now holding. Even though they'd been back together for barely over a week, it pained him to look at the pictures and to think of how she'd had to erase memories of him from her life—of how he'd tried to erase himself from her life. Despite the conversations they'd already had, and despite what she had told him, he still felt he had a lot more to do to make up for all the sadness he had caused her.
While Grissom was finding places for the photos (or trying to remember where Sara had previously put them), Sara spoke, casually. "So did I tell you about how I was framed for murder?" She knew she hadn't.
Grissom stopped what he was doing. "WHAT?"
Sara was still trying to stay casual. "Yeah, there was this waitress at the diner, Edie. I'd tried to help her out with a guy who'd been stalking her; I tried to help get her a restraining order, but the judge denied it. She ended up getting killed in a shooting at the diner. I told the stalker that, if he hadn't been terrorizing her, she wouldn't have been there at the time; she was only dead because of him."
Grissom was looking intently at Sara, but she wasn't looking at him.
She had paused for a breath, but she quickly resumed speaking. "So half a year later the guy tried to frame me for murder. Apparently he'd been planning it for months. The team had to process me—had me strip and put me in red scrubs and everything. It was, uh… pretty fun. The guy didn't really want me in jail, though…. He was trying to set me up. He wanted to kill me. He wanted me dead." She paused again for a moment. "Anyway, it didn't work out for him, obviously. He's in prison now." She tried to laugh. She didn't look at Grissom, though.
In a low voice, Grissom asked, "Why didn't you tell me?" He was barely breathing.
"Well, I mean, we've had a lot to discuss. There's still a lot of things I haven't told you from the last few years." Sara was trying to sound cheerful. She knew she was failing.
"Why didn't you tell me at the time, Sara?"
"Well, you'd just barely divorced me, so I wasn't really sure it seemed like the thing to do…." She ran a hand along the back of the couch.
Grissom had basically stopped breathing. "Sara…" he whispered.
"I guess being back in the house again just reminded me—he was in the house…."
There was still not a lot of breathing from Grissom.
"It's just… I always wondered… if I had told you, would you have…." She couldn't quite bring herself to finish the question. She wasn't even 100% sure what the end of the question was. Would he have cared? Would he have come back to Vegas? Would he have come back and stood up for her like he came back and stood up for Heather? It seemed silly now, given recent developments, to have any worries about this. But Sara still liked having as much certainty as she could get on these types of matters.
Sara continued, in a whisper, "Would you have come back for me like you came back for her? I think I was afraid that I might tell you, and you still might not care enough to come back…." She still couldn't look at him. She was looking out at the backyard, at Hank, at the pictures, at the floor… anywhere but at him.
Grissom knew he needed to say something. Or he needed to do something. Something. This wasn't about him. This was about Sara. He moved over to her and held her. He held her very tightly.
"I came back for you, Sara. Only you. It's always only you," he whispered in her ear. He stood holding her like that for a long time, until finally they lay down on the couch, and then he held her a lot longer.
After some time spent lying in silence on the couch, Sara again spoke.
"You stayed in touch with Heather, though." She didn't lift her head from his chest, so her voice was muffled.
"Huh?"
"You stayed in touch with Heather." She'd lifted her head this time. It wasn't a question.
"Oh. No. Not really."
"Last week you said you'd spoken to her—"
"I got an email about her granddaughter, Allison, so I called her a few times. You remember what she tried to do to herself—or have done to herself—after she lost custody initially. I was just worried about her."
"You weren't worried about me." This wasn't a question either.
"What? Of course I was worried about you."
"You barely stayed in touch with me."
"Yeah, well, that took a lot of effort—not being in touch with you, that is." He spoke to the ceiling. "It was still all about you, though, Sara. I just thought you'd be better off if you could have a clean break, find someone who could make you happy…." He trailed off.
"You… are such a fool."
"Yeah."
"You weren't making me unhappy."
"Yeah."
"The absence of you was making me unhappy."
"Yeah." He sighed.
"You just doubled down on the problem."
"I…." He didn't know what to say.
"It's okay. I was a total fool, too."
"No, Sar—"
"No. It's true. Are you honestly telling me—if I'd gone down there, and I'd said to you, 'Hey, remember me, your wife? Remember how you basically gave up your whole life for me, and we got married, and we were blissfully happy together—'"
"Yeah, we were." He kissed the top of her head.
"Are you honestly telling me that if I'd actually come to you and laid it all out—if I'd told you I wanted that back—you would have just sent me on my merry way?"
"No. Of course not."
"I was just so scared. I didn't want to show up and hear you say you were tired of me—that you didn't love me anymore. I couldn't bear to have you spell it out like that."
"Oh, Sar—" He wanted to cry for her.
"Fools. See. We're both fools."
"Yeah." Again he sighed. "I know what you mean, though…. After everything started to go downhill, when we weren't really talking…. I'd think about how you left Vegas not that long after we got engaged, how you couldn't stay in Vegas, but then… after we got married, you ended up coming right back here, it felt like…." In his darkest moments, once their communication had seriously started to deteriorate, he'd often found himself unable to stop dwelling on this sequence of events.
"We talked about that, though, in Paris. I just…. I didn't want to feel like this place had gotten the better of me. And I only felt prepared to come back was because I was in such a good place mentally—because I was so happy." Oh, god, how she'd been happy.
"Before that, though, when I left here…" she continued. "You know I only stuck around as long as I did because of you. I wanted to marry you so badly. And I was doing everything I could to keep you from seeing how I was falling apart. I didn't want you to see how broken I was…."
"Sara, you are not broken. You have never been broken."
"I know. But I wasn't exactly seeing clearly back then. I felt broken—and like I… like I wasn't even sure I was worth fixing."
"I'm so sorry I didn't see better what was going on—how bad it was—I feel like someone else would have seen better…." He shook his head as he stared up at the ceiling.
"Gil, I was trying to hide how bad it was from everyone. I was trying to hide it from everyone on swing. I was trying to hide it from everyone on graveyard. I was even trying to hide it from myself, I think. But most of all I was trying to hide it from you. And, honestly, when I was with you, I was happy. I was incredibly happy. It was when I was alone that everything felt so bleak."
"I…." He squeezed his eyes shut in pain at the thought.
"I mean, there was this one guy who I think sensed something was off—"
"Wait, who—" Grissom raised his head. "No one said anything—why wouldn't they say anything?"
Sara nodded at the loudly snoring mass of brown fur, who'd already made himself at home in the house by curling up on a comfortable chair nearby. "I hate to say it, but he's always had trouble verbalizing his concerns. His snuggling skills are second only to yours, though."
Grissom tried to laugh at her attempt at levity as he let his head fall back down onto the couch cushion. "Cute."
"I won't do that again, though—I won't close you out, I mean."
"Total honesty?" He managed a half smile as he looked down at her.
"Total honesty." She clasped his hand and smiled back up at him. "And I do understand…. You know, I get it. Once everything started to go downhill, it was easy to think the worst rather than the best. It was easy to take everything the wrong way. Still…."
"We were fools?"
"Total fools. Total naĂŻve fools."
"NaĂŻve?" Grissom questioned.
"Yeah, I feel like, when we got married…. I don't know…. We'd come so far; we'd overcome so many obstacles. It felt like we'd finally crossed the finish line…."
"Love conquers all."
"Exactly," Sara confirmed.
"But that wasn't the end."
"No. It wasn't. It was just the beginning. But I think…. I think we got complacent…."
"NaĂŻve." Now he understood.
"And then we let it slip away, and by the time we realized what had happened—or, at least, by the time I realized what had happened, our communication was so broken…."
"So total honesty," he said firmly. It wasn't a question this time.
"Total honesty."
They had lain wrapped up together in silence again for several minutes, as they each separately contemplated the negative assumptions that had taken over both their often-too-active-for-their-own-good brains during the breakdown of their marriage, before Grissom again spoke.
"Speaking of communication…. You know when I was on the flight here last week…."
"What?"
"I couldn't stop thinking about how I didn't know what was going on in your life, about how I didn't know what I was going to find when I got here…."
"Yeah, well—"
"I know it was my own fault. But I kept thinking about how you could be in a serious relationship or living with someone or remarried or—basically, that I might have been successful." He was drawing circles on her back as he tried to distract himself from the pain of reliving his thoughts from a week earlier. "I kept thinking you really might have found someone else—someone who could make you happy. And that was what I'd wanted, but at the same time…."
"Gil…."
"But that wasn't the worst of it. I kept thinking… what if we weren't connected anymore?" His eyes again searched the ceiling, as if it could provide the comfort he needed. "What if…. What if we were like strangers?" He sighed. "I don't think I could have survived that."
"That… that could never happen." Sara was a little teary-eyed at the thought. She buried her face in his neck and rubbed his t-shirt over his heart. "That will never happen. You and I will always be connected."
"Always." He sighed again, but this time a happier sigh, as he let his head relax onto hers.
"Always," she confirmed.
"And Sara…."
"Yes?"
"If I'd ever thought you could really be in serious trouble with the law, I'd have come back and gotten you to international waters."
"Oh, really?" Sara smiled as she continued rubbing her hand over his chest.
"Yes. Then I'd have returned and made sure the evidence exonerated you."
"Even if you thought I might not be innocent?"
"Even if I knew you weren't."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"My hero."
"Let's try to avoid that situation, though, shall we?"
"I'll do my best."
Later, Sara and Grissom had together prepared then eaten dinner—Sara's favorite walnut and lentil Bolognese on pappardelle served with citrus Caesar salad with homemade sourdough croutons—all at a nice leisurely pace. They had finished cleaning up after dinner—again, all at a nice leisurely pace—but were still standing at the sink, talking.
"You know, it's, uh, it's really nice being together in the house like this," Sara remarked.
"Hmm? We were together in the house before."
"I know, it's just… even when we bought the house, you weren't living here. So it wasn't the same. We never properly lived here together because you were always leaving. I know that was our arrangement, but I think it always affected how I saw the house."
"I see." But he hadn't been the one left behind each time, so he didn't really, not the way Sara did.
"I guess it's just that… I lived here for years, but it never properly felt like home, because even when we were married and you were here I always knew you were leaving again."
He knew what she meant about the leaving; it had always felt like she was leaving him or he was leaving her—or like he wasn't there at all.
"Sorry, that sounds negative, but the point really was that it's nice being together here now."
"You know, Sara…. We can still stay here if you want. I told you I'd come back to Vegas if you want. I meant it. It's not a hardship. I want to be with you. I'll do whatever you want to do. I'll be happy wherever you are," he said, and he meant it.
"Oh, I know. That's not what I want. I don't want to stay in Vegas," she said, and she too meant it. "I mean, we'll try the boat, and, if that doesn't work, then we'll try something else, and we'll keep trying, until we find something that works for both of us."
"Yeah." He smiled.
"It's just that… it's nice, right now, being here with you, in this house we chose. It's nice knowing that you're not leaving—or, rather, you are leaving, but you're leaving with me. I just like knowing that, wherever we are from now on, we're going to be there together. Part of me still can't believe I can just reach out and touch you whenever I want."
He liked all of that, too. In fact, he loved it. "So, while we're here, is there anything you wanted to do in this house that you've never done—that we've never done?" he asked.
"Hmm, let me think." She'd turned flirty now. She reached out and touched him, placing her hands on the top of his chest, as she wanted. "We should probably make sure we've reacquainted ourselves in every room in the house—just to be safe."
"Yes, I believe that was already on the agenda." Grissom discretely (well, okay, not really discretely) licked his lips.
"Also, I don't think we've ever danced together in this house."
"Really?"
"Not that I can recall. Can you remember us ever dancing here?"
"No," he admitted, "but weren't we supposed to be doing as many naked things as possible?" He quirked an eyebrow at her. He could be flirty, too.
"Well, I don't see any reason we couldn't try naked dancing."
Neither could he. So, after a few minutes, Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom slow-danced naked in the middle of what they now once again—if only for a short time—considered their living room. With his arms around her back, tightly embracing her, and her arms around his neck, tightly embracing him, they moved together in a slow circle.
Sara had put a mix of old love songs on shuffle, and, when Tony Bennett came on, Grissom couldn't resist thinking about how Sara looked that night—how beautiful she looked—how beautiful she was—how beautiful she'd been each and every night for as long as he'd known her. So he told her that, and, when she smiled, he knew he had made her happy.
Of course, from there the night progressed (finally—aside from Grissom's earlier handiwork during the drive, they'd been waiting since California) to yet another marvelous encounter.
Afterward, they lay facing each other; they were together in their bed (for it, too, was again theirs) for the first time in over two and a half years. Grissom was looking at Sara and stroking her hair; he was looking at her like she was the best thing he'd ever seen. She was looking at him the same way. Neither had spoken since their marvelous encounter, until Sara—of course, Sara—did.
"I think I love you rather madly, you know that?" she whispered. Even after everything else they'd traversed, somehow it still felt like an embarrassing admission to make.
"Oh, good…." He had stopped stroking her hair and started stroking her body, in long, slow, smooth strokes; he felt her tremble slightly as his caresses went lower and lower. Though his hand descended, his eyes stayed on hers.
Her hair was curled around her face but pinned back slightly, and he had a sudden flash to her sitting in a red truck, wrists bound in duct tape, looking at him like she could eat him up; he would swear she never aged. He remembered the things he'd wanted to do to her then, the things he still wanted to do to her. He licked his lower lip, and Sara smiled coyly back at him without speaking.
"That means we can be mad together, darling."
UP NEXT: NEXT CHAPTER: FALL 2015. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.
SOUNDTRACK LISTING
Etta James. "At Last."
Tony Bennett. "The Way You Look Tonight."*
Billie Holiday. "Crazy He Calls Me."
Ocie Elliott. "Run to You."
Ocie Elliott. "Down by the Water."
*Yes, it's true: "The Way You Look Tonight" has finally made it onto the playlist!
(You can listen to these songs in my playlist for this series, which can be found by searching my username on Spotify.)
EPISODE REFERENCE(S)
13x15. "Forget Me Not." Original air date: February 20, 2013.
A/N:
Thank you so very, very, very much for reading. The next chapter should be up in under a week; I hope you'll enjoy it! đź’›