A/N:

*I posted chapter 19 of this story on April 28, back when the FFN email notifications were not working (or mine were not, at any rate), so, if you have not read that chapter, please go check it out first!*

(Oh, fun, I just learned the email notifications are not working again. . . . I feel like that makes this site not very functional? How is that working out for everyone?)

Summary: An interlude (or two): on the theater and a lady (or two). 💕

On a certain divisive character who pops up in this chapter:

This chapter consists of two short(ish) interludes, the second of which features an appearance by a rather divisive character. I'm not personally a fan of LHK (though no disrespect to those who are)—aside from the Julie Cooper vibes, I also just think she's pretty horrible to Sara in "Immortality." But she's not making an appearance here for me, or for Grissom, for that matter (and certainly not for herself). She's here for Sara, so I can give our Ms. Sidle some closure on the whole Lady Heather business, and for that I hope you will find Dr. Kessler's brief presence worthwhile. 💛

Just remember that this story, like Grissom, has only one fair lady, and that fair lady is Sara—in other words: I promise it'll all be good!* 💕

*Honestly—I've already won over at least one skeptic! 💛

Fall 2015. Las Vegas, Nevada.

Dorothy Gale: There's no place like home.

– Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland),
in The Wizard of Oz.

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can

– David Jon Gilmour, George Roger Waters, Nicholas Berkeley Mason, and Richard William Wright [Pink Floyd], "Time" [from Dark Side of the Moon].

Oz: Another Interlude

"Gil!" Sara exclaimed. "Gil!" She was looking around the small house for her (former and future) husband; she was very excited. When she finally found him, she thrust the newspaper at him. "Look!" she said, pointing emphatically at the middle of the page.

"What?" Grissom took the paper from her. He couldn't see anything that justified her level of excitement. He couldn't see anything that justified any excitement.

"Look, one of the theaters is putting on The Wizard of Oz synced to Dark Side of the Moon!" Sara pointed at the paper as she sat down beside him on the couch.

"Okay." He still didn't understand how that justified Sara's level of excitement—or any excitement at all.

"You said you wanted to see it!" Sara was still excited.

"When did I say that?"

"I think you said you wanted to see it. . . . We were at the movies, and you asked me about it." Grissom's lack of excitement was kind of harshing Sara's buzz.

"When were we at the movies?" Grissom had taken Sara to the movies several times back in the spring of 2005, when he was trying to figure out how to date her. He couldn't remember going to the movies with her since, though. Once they'd begun the secret-dating phase of their relationship, trips to the movies had seemed both dangerous and unnecessary. Once they were traveling or living on separate continents, visiting the movie theater had also not been a priority.

"I guess . . . spring 2005." Sara knew they had not been to the movies since.

"And I said I wanted to see . . ." he trailed off. It had been over a decade, so even someone with a memory like Grissom's occasionally needed a moment to catch up. "Oh, yes, I remember now." He laughed. "It wasn't so much that I wanted to see it as that I wanted to know whether you would want to see it."

"Oh." Sara didn't really understand.

"You remember I told you how I'd taken out Charlotte Meridian once? She was one of the lab techs—worked swing, mostly. I think she left a year or two after you joined the lab."

"Back when you were in your seven-year pretending you weren't in love with me phase, you mean?" she needled him smugly.

"Correct." He smiled at her, shrugging in acknowledgement of his own earlier foibles. "Well, she'd asked me out, and I thought why not; I figured I'd see whether it was all science-nerd brunettes who would drive me crazy or just you." At that, he winked at her.

"I'd seen that one of the theaters was doing the whole Oz/Pink Floyd thing, and I'd always been curious about it, so I suggested she and I go," he continued. "She wasn't a fan. At the time I thought about what it would have been like to take you instead. So that's why I asked about it when you and I went to the movies."

"It would have been better with me," she teased him.

"Yes, I know." He couldn't argue with that; everything was better with Sara.

"Okay, so I guess we don't have to go," she said, just a little disappointed.

"You still haven't seen it."

"Yeah, that's fine." It wasn't that important to her; she'd really only been excited because she'd always thought he wanted to see it.

"No, we should go."

"You're sure? We really don't have to."

"Yeah, we should go."

The next day, Gil Grissom took his (former and future) wife to see a movie, for the first time in over a decade.

Once they were settled in their seats, she asked him, "Do you remember all the movies you took me to see? Back in 2005?"

"Uh, no. Not really."

"Seriously?" Sara was a little unimpressed.

Moreover, Grissom could tell she was unimpressed. "I mean, I remember taking you to the movies," he quickly clarified. "I don't really remember much of the movies themselves, though."

"No?"

"No, I mean, I was a little . . . uh . . . distracted." He smirked a bit at her. "There I was, after all those years, finally sitting—sitting generally pretty alone—for two hours in the dark beside Sara Sidle—" He gave her name all the reverence it deserved.

"I . . ." Sara laughed. "You mean the same Sara Sidle who'd known you all of four days before she basically invited herself up to your hotel room?"

"Well, I didn't know how long you usually know someone—"

She looked at him askance.

"—knew someone, rather. I still don't know, for that matter."

"Well, a lot more than four days, typically. But you . . ." She stopped and gave him the megawatt smile that—as he'd more than readily have admitted by that point—he'd loved for over seventeen and a half years. "You were just too irresistible."

He laughed. "Millions might disagree with you."

"Oh, I don't think they would. But you don't really care about millions, do you?"

He shook his head. "No. I don't. I just care about one, darling."

"That's my man."

"Anyway, I spent half the time thinking about how good you smelled and the other half wondering whether I still had an accurate memory of what it had been like to kiss you. So the movies themselves . . . I don't really have the slightest recollection."

"Oh." Sara laughed again. "I see."

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Maybe you can refresh my memory when we get home."

"Oh, my love, you don't really think I was the slightest bit interested in the movies?"

"No?" He was suddenly concerned that he'd bored her, all those years ago.

"No." She puckered her lips at him. "But I do remember quite vividly how much I liked the green apple scent of your soap—or maybe it was your shampoo. Not to mention your forearms . . ."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I may also have reflected on some things you could do with your"—she laughed as she did a quick scan over him, from tip to toes and back again—"your hands."

"Oh."

Sara laughed. "Yeah."

They couldn't help grinning at each other as the lights in the movie theater dimmed. While the trailers played, these two lovely science nerds enjoyed their snacks: once again, popcorn for Grissom and Junior Mints for Sara.

"So, you still love peppermint, huh?" Grissom asked, looking over at Sara.

"Of course," she replied, "but it's better with chocolate."

"Definitely," he agreed, before again stealing some of her Junior Mints.

She looked back over at him. "You know, all you ever had to do was ask."

He smiled. It was true.

Then he put his arm around her, and Sara leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder—just as she'd done weeks earlier, when they'd finally set sail into the sunset aboard the Ishmael; as she'd done hours earlier, when they'd sat watching Hank sniff his way around the local dog park; as she'd yearned to do years earlier, when they'd sat in yet another air-conditioned Las Vegas movie theater and she'd dreamed of what it would be like once again to feel his hot flesh pressed flush against her own cool exterior.

So he'd put his arm around her, and Sara had leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. She could already tell she was going to enjoy the show.

Fall 2015. Las Vegas, Nevada. (Still.)

Lay, lady, lay
Lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay
Stay while the night is still ahead

I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night

Stay, lady, stay
Stay while the night is still ahead

– Bob Dylan, "Lay Lady Lay."

I always expected
That you would see me through
I never believed in much
But I believed in you

Can we get it together
Can we still stand side by side
Can we make it last
Like a musical ride

– Neil Young, "From Hank to Hendrix."

My Fair Lady: A Final Interlude

"Are you finished your email yet?" Sara asked, hearing him yet again hitting delete repeatedly on the laptop's keyboard and knowing he wasn't.

"Almost."

She looked over his shoulder. "All you've written is the greeting."

"I was trying to figure out how to set the right tone."

"You've written emails before, Gil. You remember when you were graveyard shift supervisor? Writing emails and memos was actually part of your job once."

"Yeah, well, you may recall I tried to write as few of both as possible."

"Fair point." She smirked, of course. "You used to email me, though."

"That was different. You're an exception. You're exceptional."

"Well, thank you. But you're just emailing a friend here."

"I know. It's just . . . Heather's still lost her daughter and her granddaughter, and I . . . I have you"—he glanced up at her—"love of my life, heart of my heart, fairest of them all."

"All right. Very good." Sara laughed. She shook her head a little at him and continued, "But Heather emailed you because she was worried about you—you know, leaving Las Vegas all broken-hearted." She puckered her lips and smiled at him. "She'll be glad to know you're happy." She rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Very happy," he emphasized. "And . . . I know. I just . . . I just don't know how to write it."

"You managed to tell her all about your love for me the last time you saw her."

"True." This time Grissom laughed.

"You know what, get up, let's go."

"Right now?"

"Well, put on some pants first. I'm understanding, but I'm not that understanding. We'll go see if Heather's home. There's a park nearby where I can take Hank for a walk while the two of you drink your tea."

Grissom didn't move.

"Look, you go talk to Heather, then we'll pick up some food at the deli, and then we'll come back here and find something naked to do in that big bed of ours." She waggled an eyebrow at him.

Five minutes later, they were in the car.

After approximately thirty minutes in the car—thirty minutes that were, in fact, full of words—Sara, Grissom, and Hank pulled up in front of Heather's house. Sara and Grissom got out of the car, and Sara gestured Grissom in the direction of the house.

"Okay, I'm going."

"Assuming she's home, just call me when you're done. Hank and I will be back to pick you up."

Somewhat reluctantly, Grissom walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

For a moment there was no response. Then the door opened. "Grissom! I thought you were back on your boat."

Grissom glanced over at Sara, who was still watching him.

"Is that Sara?" Heather had stepped outside to see where his gaze was directed.

Sara gestured with her hand again, encouraging them to go inside the house.

Grissom laughed. "I feel like she's sending me off on a playdate."

Heather had been examining Sara, from a distance. "She looks more relaxed than when I last saw her. Less hostile. Perhaps less jealous?"

"Sara's never had any reason to be jealous." Grissom sighed. "But it's my fault if she's ever believed she did."

"The end to a relationship can do that—especially an unwanted end."

He reflexively glanced back over at his beloved, wishing he could protect her from his actions past. But she just smiled and shot him a thumbs up sign before getting into the car. He laughed.

"I sense that ending may not have been a final one?"

"It's kind of a long story. Do you have time for tea? Sara's going to take Hank to the park for a bit then come back."

"Please come in."

Forty-five minutes after she'd dropped him off at Lady Heather's, Sara received a call from Grissom on her cell phone.

"Gilbert," she answered, coyly.

"Hello, my most beautiful darling."

Sara tried to suppress her mirth as she responded. "How can I help you, my love?"

"You and Hank are still at the dog park?"

"Yes."

"You're about a ten-minute drive away?"

"That's right—just under, probably."

"Well, assuming Hank's had enough playtime, do you want to leave now and meet me back here at Heather's? You can bring Hank up to the house to say, 'Hi,' if that works? I've been telling Heather how helpful—how comforting—he was to me all those years ago, when I first adopted him."

"You mean all those years ago when you were too scared to date me and were pretending you weren't madly in love with me?"

"Yes, all those years ago when I was too scared to date you and was pretending I wasn't madly in love with you, dearest."

"Okay, well, then we should be there in about—oh, shit, Hank just found the creek. Ah, well. We've got dog towels in the car. But I guess we'll be there in just over ten minutes now."

"Okay, sounds good. See you then, sweetheart."

"Okay, see you soon," Sara replied, again trying not to laugh. Given Heather's diabetes, Sara doubted the lady of the house had been plying Grissom with sugar, but something seemed to have sweetened him up. Even for her eager-to-make-up-for-lost-time (soon-to-be-no-longer) ex-husband, that was a lot of terms of endearment to load into one short phone call.

Sara sighed as she led Hank back to the car and turned her attention to the next stop in their brief afternoon adventure. Although she had mellowed on Heather considerably since realizing that self-same ex was mooning about over one and only one fair Vegas lady of the night—that fair lady being Sara herself—she wouldn't have felt the need to introduce the other woman to their dog, of all beloved creatures.

Nonetheless, Heather had suffered the kind of tragedy few could even imagine, and Sara knew herself to be one of those few. This was another of the reasons she'd tried—and, to be fair, she thought, almost completely succeeded—in taking a more laid-back approach to the former dominatrix.

Although, above almost all else, Sara tried not to judge, on a personal level she'd never seen the appeal of Lady Heather's former world. Like Grissom's (unsurprisingly), Sara's sex life didn't involve going to the theater. Although she knew things could easily have gone a different way for her, she'd emerged from the shadows of her parents' thermite-like-relationship seeking as her ideal—subconsciously at the time, she would concede—a relationship founded on radical respect; radical equality; and, more recently, radical honesty.

From the first day she'd met him, Sara had implicitly felt that radical respect and radical equality with Grissom. (This was perhaps why her sense, a year or two after she'd moved to Vegas, that she'd lost that respect—there was that incident with the beef and whatnot and her threatening to leave the lab, after all—had cut her so thoroughly to the quick.)

Others might have found it strange that she'd finally found herself on equal footing with a man who was markedly her senior, in both age and professional experience, but she and Grissom had come together in partnership despite those differences, not because of them. The truth was that they were, at heart, both just a couple of science nerds—always had been, would be so forevermore. So when they'd sat at dinner that first night in San Francisco—eating tacos, drinking margaritas, exchanging crime scene stories, and laughing together over Grissom's reliably ridiculous puns—they could have both been sixteen or nearly sixty, and it really wouldn't have made any difference; they'd still have been made for each other: corresponding shapes, like puzzle pieces from the clay.

In the end, though, the most fundamental reason Sara had tried to improve her outlook on Heather was that she suspected Heather was one of the few people, aside from Sara herself, who properly respected, appreciated, and—to a much lesser degree than herself, of course—understood Sara's most beloved creature. She recognized that for that good taste, if nothing else, Heather deserved some of her own respect and appreciation.

Still, she didn't know why the lady had to meet their dog.

When Sara and Hank arrived back at the now-familiar house—the former domain—Grissom and Heather were already waiting outside on Heather's covered front stoop. Sara and Hank walked up to the house to meet them under the cover, tucked away from the sun.

Once Sara had reached the front door, she handed Hank's leash over to Grissom, so he in turn could introduce Hank to Heather. As she and Grissom stood there, side by side, Sara realized they were positioned almost exactly where they had been when he'd given her his "seeing you again left me a little speechless" speech back in September. Based on the twinkle in his eye as he took the leash from her, she divined he'd recognized the same.

"Thanks, baby," he told her.

"Uh, you're welcome, honey?" she replied.

Grissom laughed and slipped an arm around her waist.

"Hello, Sara."

Sara turned to face their host. "Hi, Heather. You seem to be doing well. I'm glad to see it." Sara was pleased with herself; she'd even managed to put a bit of grace in her delivery.

"As do you. And likewise." Heather was polite and—as almost always—stoic. "Congratulations on your recent engagement. From what Grissom has told me, I feel quite confident that the two of you should be able to make each other very happy."

"Thank you, Heather." Gracious, Sara. Be gracious. "We will." Sara didn't need to be "quite confident"; Sara knew.

Happily for Sara, Grissom took over the conversation. "So, uh, Heather, this is Hank." He looked from Heather to Hank. Then, looking from Hank to Heather, he added, "Hank, this is Heather."

Heather courteously bent down to greet the always-friendly animal, who thumped his tail at the prospect of a new friend, but Sara sensed that she, like Catherine, might have been more of a cat person.

Sara still couldn't quite figure out this whole animal introduction; she felt like there was something she was missing, something she couldn't exactly put her finger on: all the terms of endearment Grissom had thrown at her in their short phone call; his arm around her waist—after so many years of secrecy, they'd never really taken to public displays of affection in front of friends and loved ones and . . . whatever Heather was; and "baby" . . . Sara couldn't remember the last time he'd called her baby. Had he ever called her "baby"? That was usually her line. Well, of course, he'd very memorably called her "baby" that one time, in the lab, in front of Sofia of all people, but never—

And in that instant Sara knew. They were not there for Heather. They were not there for Hank. They were not there for Grissom. They were there for her. Every one of her previous encounters with Heather had been so awkward; she'd always felt on the defensive, whether it had been because of the furtive actions of her secret boyfriend-slash-boss; the long-distance nature of her first marriage; or the sudden, shocking reappearance of her first husband, just weeks earlier.

But, as they stood there together on Heather's front stoop, the truth of the matter had never been clearer; Grissom had only two teammates: her (his beloved bride-to-be) and Hank. Sara realized then that he'd wanted to be sure, 100% sure, as sure as he could be that Sara knew he was interested in exactly one fair lady of Las Vegas, and that fair lady was Sara. The tea, of course, had been for Heather, and for Grissom, but they were at that moment all standing there on that covered stoop for Sara.

She turned her head toward Grissom's. "I love you," she whispered in his ear. "Always and forever," she then added, before returning her gaze to Heather and the hound.

Grissom now turned his head toward her. "I love you, sweetheart," he told her, not at all a whisper. He kissed her temple, over her loose hair. "Always and forever," he added, more quietly, in her ear, "you are my love."

Wild. Maybe they'd have to come stand beside each other on Lady Heather's stoop more often. She quite liked the things he said there.

He laughed when she again whispered in his ear: "I'm glad you're not speechless anymore, Gil."

An hour after their initial arrival at Heather's, Sara, Grissom, and Hank were back in the car. Two hours after that initial arrival, they were back home with food from the deli. Three hours after that initial arrival, Sara and Grissom had found something naked to do back in that big bed of theirs.

UP NEXT: NEXT CHAPTER: FALL 2015. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON.

SOUNDTRACK LISTING

Bob Dylan. "Lay Lady Lay."

Neil Young. "From Hank to Hendrix."

(You can listen to the songs in my playlist for this series, which can be found here or by searching my username on Spotify.)

A/N:

Cover art is available on Tumblr for chapter 20. (I again managed to do "Immortality" GIF cover art for this one!)

Thank you so very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little interlude and are ready for what's to come! We've still got a bit of planning, a wedding, and another sail off into the sunset ahead of us, so I am pretty excited for it all. 💕 I might even let the rest of the team talk. (I will.) Posting for me is a mixture of excitement and dread, so, you know, tell me I'm (my story is) pretty or something, and the excitement will definitely win out sooner! (This isn't an attempt at manipulation; it's just facts.) Happy almost summer (or winter, depending on where you are), and, until next time, stay well! 💛

P.s. My apologies to the cat lovers. I am first and foremost a dog person (đŸ’›đŸ¶), but I love all creatures great and small. đŸ˜»