A/N:

I wasn't sure about posting this right now. It felt really incongruous to be putting something intended to be joyful out into the world amidst the current horrors. But to let them steal our joy is to admit defeat, and we all need an escape sometimes. (I've put some more of my thoughts on this on Tumblr, if you're interested.) So shine on everyone. Fight the good fight. Remember to look after yourselves. Take a break and find some joy when you need it.

Hugs to all. 💛💛💛

Summary: The wedding day continues. 🐰💕🐰

Fall 2015. Las Vegas, Nevada.

ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain
for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman
I casually met there who detain'd me for love of me;
Day by day and night by night we were together,
—All else has long been forgotten by me;
I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me,
Again we wander—we love—we separate again;
Again she holds me by the hand—I must not go!
I see her close beside me, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.

– Walt Whitman, "Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City."

I will come for you at night time
I will raise you from your sleep
I will kiss you in four places

[. . .]

You will make me laugh and make me cry
We will never forget it
You will make me call your name
and I'll shout it to the blue summer sky

– Hunters and Collectors, "Throw Your Arms Around Me."

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

– Pablo Neruda, excerpt from "One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII," tr. Mark Eisner.

You ought to give me
Wedding rings

– Stephin Merritt [for The Magnetic Fields], "The Book of Love."

Not Every Love Story Needs a Wedding Reception, But This One Does

At the appointed hour, other guests began to arrive at the celebration taking place in Catherine's unsurprisingly nice backyard. While Grissom's dark suit could possibly have blended in with the rest of the well-dressed crowd, Sara's long white dress did not. Before long, all assembled were aware of the event that had taken place before most had arrived.

Conrad Ecklie, Morgan Brody, Henry Andrews, Sofia Curtis, and (most of) the rest of the newly assembled guests were gracious in their congratulations. When she and Grissom chatted with Sofia, Sara flashed back to sitting under a cold shower in her old apartment, crying because the man who'd now married her twice had once taken Sofia to dinner; Sara had to laugh, if only to herself. She'd tell Grissom about it later.

David Hodges, of course, did not understand why he had not been invited to be Grissom's best man, even if he'd only seen the man twice in the past six and a half years; he was close with Sara, too, after all. Slight bitterness of David Hodges aside, though, drinks continued to flow, canapés were passed, and all in attendance agreed they were having really a rather lovely time.

As the event wore on, the white lights set up around the garden started twinkling in the fading light, and eventually cake was served, though neither Sara nor Grissom was involved in the cutting of it. Catherine clinked her fork on her glass and, when that didn't achieve the desired effect, told everyone assembled to shut up. With that, she turned the floor—or, rather, the patio—over to Grissom.

"I'm sorry I haven't met all of you. For those of you I don't know, my name is Gil Grissom, and I was graveyard shift supervisor at the lab for a while," he told them.

Everyone present had known of Dr. Grissom—former graveyard shift supervisor, legendary Las Vegas CSI, (inter)nationally renowned forensic entomologist, and one-time ex-husband of Ms. Sara Sidle. He was the boss everyone would have wanted but only few had been privileged enough to have.

When he'd walked back into the lab earlier that fall, admittedly they might not all have recognized Grissom. But that was before he'd somehow become the center of a crazed man's murderous bombing spree and been featured repeatedly on the local and (inter)national news. Everyone knew who Grissom was. Everyone knew Grissom was being, all in all, quite modest in his introduction of himself to those assembled.

"When I left the lab six and a half years ago, there was no cake, and there were no farewell speeches. I wouldn't be speaking to you all now, except, well, you may by now have heard that I got married today. For the second time. To the same woman." Grissom paused and shook his head at himself a little. Twenty years ago, who would have imagined Gil Grissom getting married even once, let alone twice to the same woman?

"My wife . . ." Grissom paused again, as internally his heart leapt at once more being able to refer to her as such. He gathered his thoughts and went on with his words to those assembled. "My wife, I think, would prefer that I not say anything today. To be honest, I'm not very good at talking about my wife. I'm not very good at talking about my feelings for my wife—even with my wife, or perhaps especially with my wife, I'm not very good at talking about my feelings for her.

"I guess you might at least expect me to come up with an appropriate Shakespeare quotation or two—maybe 'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind' or 'The course of true love never did run smooth'—but that strikes me as inadequate for the moment.

"Maybe, 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds / Or bends with the remover to remove.' I cannot speak for all love, but I would vouch that much for my own.

"Perhaps, 'Those lines that I before have writ do lie / Ev'n those that said I could not love you dearer / Yet then my judgment knew no reason why / My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.' But that also, though very true, is too imperfect an expression of my sentiments.

"So instead of doing a bad job of trying to talk about my recent nuptials, I'm going to talk to you about continuing education." This was perhaps not what the almost universally attentive guests were expecting from the speaker on his wedding day. "We are—mostly—all scientists here, right? I can't stress enough the importance of continuing education. Attend conferences whenever you can. I didn't usually like to tear myself away from the lab, but I liked the opportunity to learn from my peers and to teach.

"Seventeen and a half years ago now I attended the 50th annual AAFS conference, held at the Hilton in San Francisco—the one on O'Farrell, between Mason and Taylor, just a couple blocks off Union Square. . . ." Grissom was vaguely aware the Hilton's full name had since been changed, but he didn't know the new one.

"I was giving a lecture at the beginning of the conference. I walked into the conference room early, and there was this young woman sitting there, looking over her materials. I remember she had a ponytail. I started talking to her. She was sort of ignoring me.

"She was, I soon discovered, brilliant. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen—the most beautiful person I've ever met. And she completely changed my life." He paused for a moment and thought. "She changed my whole world," he added, repeating the sentiment from his wedding vows.

"So, yeah, keep up with your continuing education, and, if you have the opportunity, attend all the conferences you can." With that, Grissom winked at his bride, who beamed back at him with, most definitely, a megawatt smile.

Catherine was standing beside Sara at the time. Once Grissom had finished his short speech, Catherine leaned over and cheekily whispered to her friend. "You know, he was quite the looker back then. I mean, no shade on the present man. It's just a shame you two never . . . well, you know, back in the day."

In response, Sara smiled at her friend, arched an eyebrow, and turned and walked toward her groom.

Catherine had at one time—quite long ago, at that point—suspected Grissom and his "friend" had had some sort of prior relationship. As time had gone on, however, Catherine had come to believe Sara and Grissom had simply previously shared a, for many years unconsummated, mutual longing. Catherine thought back to her question of Grissom from years earlier—how long had he and Sara been together? Catherine began to suspect she'd never know the exact truth.

In one of their few concessions to tradition, Sara and Grissom had agreed to a first dance. They had, after all, been practicing, naked, in their living room, for weeks. Grissom had requested to choose the song for the first dance; he'd kept his choice a surprise, and Sara was mostly pretty confident he wouldn't choose an Italian opera—emphasis on mostly.

"Dance with me, Ms. Sidle?" He held out his hand to her.

"I'd be honored, Dr. Grissom." She took it.

Grissom had chosen the live version of Fleetwood Mac's "Bleed to Love Her," off The Dance. As Sara and Grissom began their dance, he explained to her that he had heard the song while they were apart and had dreamed of dancing to it with her. The chorus had made him think of her—of how he felt about her—of how he would bleed to love her.

So they danced, except it was less a formal dance and more Sara holding on to her new husband very tightly around the neck and moving around with him very slightly to the music. He, in return, held on just as tightly to her.

"You know, I think this is the happiest day of my life," he whispered in her ear.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He thought for a moment. "Of course, I tend to think that about most days when I'm with you, darling."

"Oh. Okay." She laughed as she clung onto his neck, and they continued in their slow circle.

After half a minute more of this, she added, "I'm so happy to be with you every day, too, my love."

Grissom had chosen their first dance, but Sara had chosen the second. So they continued their time on the dance floor—really, the dance patio—as Peter Gabriel's cover of "The Book of Love" played for them:

The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we're all too young to know

But I
I love it when you give me things
And you
You ought to give me wedding rings

And I
I love it when you give me things
And you
You ought to give me wedding rings

You ought to give me
Wedding rings

While the song played, they stayed pressed together, and Grissom sang along very softly in Sara's ear.

After their two very slow dances, Sara and Grissom blended back into the crowd, where they stayed together, arm in arm, doing their very best to make small talk—they hated small talk—with various people they had known for years.

Eventually Sara was relieved to find herself alone (or as alone as one could be in the somewhat crowded backyard) with her husband.

She had relaxed her body into Grissom's, but he soon felt her stiffen under his hand. When he looked up and saw Conrad Ecklie walking toward them, he felt his own back stiffen as well. Although he understood Ecklie had become something less of an utter asshole in recent years, he'd never fully been able to rid himself of the visceral reaction his long association with the man had brought about.

"Conrad," Sara said, not quite coolly, but not exactly warmly either. Their correspondence and conversations since her departure had been cordial, and his earlier greeting had been kind, but, if anyone she knew was capable of fucking that up in one quick interaction, it was Ecklie.

Even the sheriff himself could recognize Sara's apprehension. "Relax, Sara. I'm not here to make trouble on your wedding day."

Sara didn't relax.

"And, I mean, you were right in your note—I should have realized you'd leave me for him in a heartbeat." Ecklie laughed.

Sara and Grissom still didn't know Ecklie's agenda; they didn't join in.

"I actually came over because this all brought back a memory I thought you might enjoy hearing about—even though I know your husband doesn't have a very high opinion of my understanding of women." Ecklie then turned his attention to Grissom. "And it strikes me as the sort of thing Dr. Grissom might have neglected to mention."

Sara and Grissom still stood stiffly.

"Guys, seriously, I'm not here to cause trouble—I just thought it would be a nice story, appropriate for the occasion."

The two lovely science nerds relaxed slightly. "Okay," Sara said, accompanied by a "go on" gesture of her hand.

"You may remember about ten years ago, we had an incident at the office, and I suggested that it would be in the best interests of the department if . . . well, if Sara no longer worked there."

"Conrad!"

Though Grissom was always very good at maintaining a professional temperament, Sara didn't mind him making an exception in this case.

"Hold on—it's just context. I'd more or less ordered you to fire Sara—obviously overestimating my ability to get you to do anything I wanted."

"Yes, I think we all recall the incident, Conrad," Grissom responded, with more than a hint of impatience (and perhaps a soupcon of contempt).

"This is good, Gil. I think you're channeling your attitude of the time very well."

Sara put a hand on her husband's chest. "Could we maybe get on with this joyous story?"

Ecklie decided to direct his story more completely to Sara, who was really its intended target. "Well, I'd more or less ordered him to fire you—"

"More," Grissom interjected.

"—and I don't know what he'd been up to in the interim. I imagine he went to talk to you. But he came back and just about dared me to fire him instead. Told me your behavior was a direct result of his management. Told me he 'needed' you."

"Oh." For the second time in two days, Sara was a little speechless.

"Even then, though, it wasn't really the words that stuck out. It was the expression—the attitude. Honestly, I thought he was about this close"—Ecklie held up his thumb and his pointer finger, mere millimeters apart—"to challenging me to a duel or a street fight or pistols at dawn."

Ecklie and Sara both looked at Grissom, who smiled contentedly—and shrugged unapologetically.

"I guess certain events that followed really shouldn't have come as such a surprise." He gestured around himself. "I guess that's one of the reasons I'm sheriff not a detective. Probably one of the reasons I never had either of you fired for your multi-year violation of lab policy, too."

"CONRAD." Grissom was, again, no longer smiling.

"Right. Wedding. Anyway . . . it just seemed the kind of thing you might like to know." Ecklie again directed himself at Sara. "And I didn't know this was a wedding, so I didn't get the chance to get you anything." He started to turn to walk away. "But tell me where you're registered. I'll go pick you up a blender or a gravy boat or something next week."

Grissom raised an eyebrow. "We're going to be living on a boat, Conrad."

"Right, well . . . his and hers life jackets, then." Ecklie chuckled as he walked away, finding himself much funnier than either of our science nerds had ever found him.

Again alone, Sara and Grissom turned back to one another.

"You did that for me?"

Grissom looked around himself at the festive celebration, then down at Sara's wedding dress, then down at his own suit. He raised his eyebrows. "You can hardly be surprised."

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised now. But back then . . . back then we weren't even dating yet."

"Well, you'd moved to Vegas for me, as you'd just recently informed me. It seemed like the least I could do."

"But you were always afraid of what being with me would cost you."

"I had been—for a long time I had been. But not then. Then I just knew . . . I knew I loved you—and I needed you. And I knew I'd let you down. And I didn't ever want to let you down again." He paused and frowned a little. "Obviously I wasn't exactly successful there. . . ."

"Gil, as long as you keep trying, you'll never let me down."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She leaned forward slightly and sunk into his arms, her head on his shoulder. "Yeah."

"I'm never going to stop trying, Sara."

She smiled into his shoulder. "I know."

Sara was still leaning on Grissom's shoulder when she felt a tap on her own. She turned around to see Greg facing them, a sparkler in one hand, lighting four more in the other. Behind him she could see a sea of sparkling lights spreading across the great lawn.

"Here," he passed two sparklers each to Sara and Grissom, who gamely twirled their short, metal sticks in the air. "Let me take a picture."

The happy couple smiled as Greg snapped one more wedding photo of them.

He looked at the back of his camera. "Excellent! Okay." He held up more, unlit sparklers. "More work to do." He handed over a few more unlit sparklers, to be lit from those already in their hands, kissed Sara on the cheek, and carried on his way.

Sara watched as the waves of light spread through the crowd then finally retreated, like an ebbing tide, so only the lights in the trees and the glow from Catherine's oversized house remained.

Once all their metal sticks had cooled, Grissom took them and shoved them in his pocket, but his eyes never left Sara. Intently he examined his wife.

Sara shivered as she scanned the boisterous crowd.

"You okay? You want my jacket?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she responded, somewhat distractedly.

Grissom raised his eyebrows.

Sara laughed when she noticed his expression. "All right. Give me the jacket." She held out her right hand. "Please."

What he slipped off, he helped her slip on.

"Thank you, baby," she murmured.

He returned to face her and ran his hands down her new black sleeves. "Better?"

"Yeah. . . ." Her eyes were again on the crowd.

"What?"

She sighed and brought her gaze back to his. "Take me home, Gil."

"Where's home, Sara?" His eyes tracked over her face.

"Wherever you and Hank are." She leaned in and kissed his jawline.

"Then we better leave before Hank turns into a pumpkin. Come on, honey." Grissom held his hand out to her and nodded in the direction of the street. "Let's get out of here."

Sara nodded her agreement and happily placed her hand in his.

Sara and Grissom said goodnight to Betty, who would again be spending the night at the Eclipse. They would give Catherine their thanks, of course, but they could save that for another day.

Then Grissom once more took Sara's hand and Hank's leash, and all three disappeared into the night.

UP NEXT: NEXT CHAPTER: FALL 2015. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. NOT EVERY LOVE STORY NEEDS A WEDDING NIGHT, BUT THIS ONE DOES.*

*WARNING: This will not be smut. (Sorry!)

SOUNDTRACK LISTING

Hunters & Collectors. "Throw Your Arms Around Me."

Fleetwood Mac. "Bleed to Love Her" (Live).

Peter Gabriel. "The Book of Love."

Rick Morris & Jorja Fox. "Let's Get Out of Here."

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

A/N:

If you still need a bit more of a diversion, I recently posted an extremely fluffy one-shot, set some days after the CSI: Vegas roller coaster ride, which you can find via my profile; I hope you'll check it out! 🐰💕🐰

Again, I hope you are still able to find joy some in the world. I could definitely go for some joy myself, so I would love to hear from you. I am again including the wedding confetti, if you'd like to use some of it in the comments (no words or decision-making or anything else required!), because its use completely delighted me last time!

💛💒💍 🎇 * ⭐️ 🎊💕🐶 * 🌵💖🌟✨ 🎆 * 🎢❤️🐝🎉💜🐰

⭐️ 🎊💕🐶 * 🌵💖🌟✨ 🎆 * 🎢❤️🐝🎉💜🐰 * 💛💒💍 🎇

🌵💖🌟✨ 🎆 * 🎢❤️🐝🎉💜🐰 * 💛💒💍 🎇 * ⭐️ 🎊💕🐶

🎢❤️🐝🎉💜🐰 * 💛💒💍 🎇 * ⭐️ 🎊💕🐶 * 🌵💖🌟✨ 🎆

More hugs. 💛💛💛