Spring 2009. The California Coast.

I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I'd like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars
I'd love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I'd give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of California stars

I'd like to dream my troubles all away
On a bed of California stars
Jump up from my starbed, make another day
Underneath my California stars
They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers' glass like friendly wine
So I'd give this world just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of California stars

– Woody Guthrie, "California Stars."

Big Brown Eyes: Happy Trails

After their bug-filled canoe trip—the second of their honeymoons—Sara and Grissom went to visit Grissom's mother, Betty, at her house in Marina Del Rey, a seaside community in Los Angeles County, situated north of LAX and southeast of Venice.

Grissom had wanted to introduce Sara to his mother in person. Despite having left their (or, as she thought, his) dog with her, Grissom had not given his mother any specifics on the reason for his trip to the rainforest, uncertain as he was of whether he would find success there.

With more in-depth consideration of the matter, Grissom might have understood he should perhaps have laid some more groundwork, on his mother's side, for the introduction of the two most important people in his life; with more in-depth consideration of the matter, Grissom might also have understood they should perhaps, as Sara had initially suggested, have made his mother the first stop on their tour after their return to the States.

Upon Sara and Grissom's eventual arrival in Marina del Rey, Grissom's mother was first shocked but then overjoyed to learn of her son's marriage, and, if she was a little put out only to be hearing of it some months after it had taken place, well, she tried her best only to show it a little bit. If she was also surprised to learn her (she had thought) confirmed bachelor son had previously been living with a woman 15 years his junior whom she had never met, she tried her best to show that only a little bit, too.

From the beginning of his acquaintance with Sara, Grissom had resisted discussing her with his mother. For many years, he had been subconsciously fearful he would reveal to his mother his true feelings for Sara at a time when he had been unwilling to reveal those true feelings even to himself.

Later, when he and Sara had begun dating in Las Vegas, Grissom had hardly wanted to publicize to his mother that he was carrying on a clandestine relationship with one of his younger subordinates; he didn't think she'd be impressed. After he and Sara had first become engaged, he'd planned to bring her to Marina Del Rey to meet his mother, but life had had different plans for them.

After initial introductions and some conversation over afternoon tea, Mrs. Grissom advised Sara and Grissom the bed was made up in Grissom's childhood bedroom and suggested they take their luggage upstairs, so they could unpack.

At this, Sara had become quite excited, and she eagerly followed her husband upstairs and down the hall to the bedroom.

"Oh," she said and stopped short. Unfortunately, in her surprise, she failed to conceal her disappointment at the sight of the lovely room before her.

The room had walls of a very pale yellow and a wooden floor, and it was filled with good quality vintage wooden furniture. A large green plant stood in one corner. A faint breeze ruffled the sheer white curtains, which let in light from the large west-facing windows, which had been left slightly ajar. The duvet had a white floral eyelet cover, and an old, well-loved woolen camp blanket had been laid carefully across the foot of the bed. The two bedside tables each had vintage lamps and mason jars filled with daisies.

To anyone else, it would have seemed almost perfect. To Sara, too, in different circumstances, it would have seemed almost perfect. But these were not those circumstances.

"What?" Grissom asked.

"Oh, nothing." Sara's mind had caught up with her mouth, and she was now trying to conceal her disappointment.

"What is it?" He looked at her. Sara may have been trying to conceal her disappointment, but she wasn't succeeding.

"No, nothing. I guess I just…."

He kept looking at her intently.

Sara caved under the minimal pressure. "I guess, when you said we'd be sleeping in your childhood bedroom, I thought maybe…."

"That it would still look like my childhood bedroom?" Grissom laughed.

"Well… yes." Sara felt rather silly now. "I guess in movies or TV shows you see people going home to their childhood bedrooms, and I didn't exactly have a real-life reference for that…."

"Yeah." For neither the first nor the last time, Grissom wanted to cry for his wife, as he looked into her big brown eyes.

"I guess I was just hoping for a glimpse into the world of a teenaged Gil Grissom." She smiled at him.

He almost got distracted from the conversation, just thinking about how sweet she was, but he recovered. "My mom changed the room to a guest bedroom as soon as I moved out. She wanted more relatives to be able to come visit, she told me. Anyway, I stayed here at home through college—"

"Of course you did. You were just a baby, starting college at 16." Sara batted her eyelashes at him. She was looking forward to hunting for pictures of a 16-year-old Gil Grissom.

"You're one to talk, Ms. Harvard on a full-ride scholarship at 16."

"Yeah, well, I hadn't had my birthday yet. I turned 17 a couple weeks after I started. You spent your whole freshman year of college at 16." Sara was still smiling at the thought of a 16-year-old Grissom.

"As I was saying, I stayed here through college, but my mom changed the room as soon as I left home, when I started my PhD."

"Well, it's lovely." It was lovely. But she was still disappointed.

"Do you want me to tell you what it looked like forty years ago?"

"Oooh, yes, please!" Sara perked up.

"Okay. Forty years ago, I was about twelve and a half."

"The half is important."

"When you're twelve, it is."

"Agreed."

"Well, I still had a cowboy bedspread, plus this blanket, I think." Grissom pointed at the woolen camp blanket at the foot of the bed. "The bedspread had coordinating sheets, with lassos and horseshoes on them, if I'm remembering correctly."

"Adorable." Sara couldn't suppress her smile.

"I also had a stuffed horse that slept in the bed."

"You slept with a stuffed animal?" Sara was almost weak with affection for the twelve—no, twelve and half—year-old version of her husband.

"We both slept in the bed."

"You slept with a stuffed animal. What was his name?"

"Trigger." That should have been obvious.

"Of course."

"A horse."

"Of course, of course."

"That's pretty good." Grissom laughed. "Mr. Ed was definitely before your time."

"I must have seen some reruns."

"Anyway, that was the closest I got to a horse after I convinced my mom to let me try horseback riding, then I, uh…." Grissom raised his left arm to indicate the scar on his forearm.

"Tried to play cowboy, fell off the horse, and gashed open your arm?" Sara ran a finger gently along her husband's scar.

Grissom shivered at her light touch. "Yeah." He glanced at the yellow walls as he tried to refocus on the conversation. "I also had a framed picture of Trigger on the wall. I had a picture of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, too, and I think pictures of some of the other cowboys of the time."

"Hmm, Dale Evans. Did you have pictures of any other women on the wall?"

"I had a picture of Donna Reed, from The Donna Reed show."

"Donna Reed. I'm going to have to remember that. What else did you have?"

"I had a few posters of Cubs players. I had a poster of the constellations. And I had display boxes of dried plants my dad had put together when I was little. As I got older, I started making my own displays of insects I collected, and I had most of those here, too.

"My mom hated them. I think she felt better about it when I started studying to become an entomologist—then she could see them as part of a scientific pursuit, instead of just old bugs hanging around her house. She still boxed them up as soon as she could when I left, though—the ones I didn't take with me, that is."

Grissom looked around the room as he tried to visualize any other important details. "And I always had piles of books all over the place."

"Not surprising."

"Oh, and I had boxes of baseball cards—plus a fly ball someone gave me at one of the Cubs games I attended with my dad. I didn't catch it, but they took pity on my because I was young."

"And cute, I bet." How can a 52 (and a half)-year-old man still be so cute? Sara wanted to push him onto the bed right that instant.

Grissom gave her a bashful smile and tried to shift his focus away from how long it would take him to get this delectable woman naked and lying on the bed.

"What about when you got older? How did the room change?"

"Well, I got a record player and started collecting LPs. The scientific displays started crowding out the Cubs posters."

"How about Donna?"

"She stayed for quite a while, too. I'm honestly not sure if she was still there in the end. She was probably hidden behind some butterflies."

"Figures."

"Eventually the cowboy sheets wore out and got exchanged for something simpler—stripes, I think."

"And what about Trigger."

"Oh, uh, Trigger moved to the bedside table." Grissom coughed. "Most nights."

Sara smiled at Grissom like he was the most adorable thing she'd ever seen—which he was. "I take it you didn't bring a lot of girls back to this room?"

"That would be correct."

"How many?"

"Uh… zero. I brought home the girlfriend from college I told you about, but that was after my mom had moved all my stuff out of the bedroom. Plus she had us sleep in separate rooms anyway."

"I guess it's a good thing you married me before bringing me home, or we'd be sleeping in separate rooms."

"I'm sure my mom's relieved someone has finally made an honest man out of me."

"So did you and the college girlfriend sneak into each other's rooms every night?"

"No."

"Any night?"

"No."

"During the day?"

"Still no."

"So have you ever gotten laid in this room?"

"Nope."

"This house?"

"Never."

"This… I don't know… property?"

Grissom shook his head.

"Well…." Sara walked over to the door, which she gently closed then locked. "There's a first time for everything…."

To Mrs. Grissom, the silver lining to her son having chosen a younger bride was being able to revive that old dream of grandchildren, which she had forced herself to abandon quite a number of years earlier. When she brought this up, Grissom was grateful that Sara's signing skills were still rudimentary at best, and he put off telling his mother that grandchildren were still not in the cards.

The highlight of Sara and Grissom's short stop in Marina Del Rey was (though neither would admit it) their reunion with their real (fur) child, the beloved Hank, who had spent the preceding months being spoiled rotten by Betty and enjoying his new position as best friend and confidante to most of the neighborhood children (and some of the teens and adults).

Each night, after Betty went to bed, Sara and Grissom took Hank for a moonlit walk down near the water. Once they returned to Betty's house, Grissom poured two glasses of red wine (and got out a couple dog cookies for Hank), and their group of three sat out on the low wooden deck in the backyard of Grissom's childhood home—holding hands, chatting, getting ear scritches, and looking up at the midnight blue California sky, with its bed of California stars.

Sara and Grissom cherished every minute with their much-adored furry family member. Hank, of course, had been as overjoyed to see Sara and Grissom as they were to see him, and all parties felt real sorrow at their inevitable parting.

An Affair to Remember: I Left My Heart in San Francisco

After Marina Del Rey, Sara and Grissom traveled up the coast to San Francisco, where they had met at that that fateful AAFS conference eleven years earlier. Their full itinerary is not worth repeating, as this was a visit inspired wholly by nostalgia.

As such, their Northern California travels were quite close to what they had been in the few days following that same fateful AAFS conference, as well as in the week of Grissom's Berkeley visit from later that same year: wandering the streets of San Francisco, visiting favorite restaurants and favorite bookshops, inhaling the salty sea air and making out on the outer deck of the Sausalito ferry, driving along the coast of the Pacific Ocean to Santa Cruz to ride the Giant Dipper.

While traveling, Sara and Grissom had also been planning. They had submitted grant applications and were awaiting funding of their proposed research. Grissom had been offered a position guest-lecturing for a semester at the Sorbonne. Sara had never been to Europe, and Grissom had never been there for pleasure, so they had together decided this would be an enjoyable way for them to bide their time while waiting for their research grant to get funded.

Sara, never one to like to leave things undone, was considering resuming her long-abandoned doctoral studies, though likely not in physics but instead aligning with what she and Grissom had been investigating in the Costa Rican rainforest and their planned future research, and she had a massive stack of (virtual) journal articles waiting for her on her laptop.

After so many years spent investigating crimes in Las Vegas and elsewhere, Sara and Grissom had not expected the turn their lives had taken. These first few months of marriage had already brought much more adventure than either had anticipated experiencing in their lives, and they were grateful for every minute of it. This was not the end to their adventure, though; no, they were just getting started….

UP NEXT: NEXT CHAPTER: SPRING 2009. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

NOTES

On Gil Grissom's scar:

I need to give a shout-out to figsr on Tumblr, for pointing out both WP's scar and the fact that, unlike JF's tattoo, it's not commonly mentioned in fic. Thanks, Fi! 💛

I also owe Fi many belated thanks for her very well-informed opinions on WP's beard—and the shaving thereof—which helped inform the beard dialogue in the previous story in this series, "So Don't Ever, Don't Ever, Don't Forget," about a long-distance telephone call… and a movie. Thank you!

On the best dog they ever had:

My dogs have all been the kind of easygoing pups who would adapt well to this change in circumstances, and I have to headcanon the same for Hank because… well… because I just have to. I imagine Betty reported that Hank had been doing very well and that Sara and Grissom thought it was fairer to Hank to leave him with Betty in Marina Del Rey as king of the neighbourhood than to drag him to Paris.

SOUNDTRACK LISTING

Billy Bragg & Wilco. "California Stars."

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

A/N:

Thank you so very much for reading, and I'd love to hear from you! I hope you enjoyed this chapter; another one should be up in about a week (or exactly a week, if everything goes according to plan). In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend! 💛

Also, today is the birthday of the lovely Ms. Jorja Fox, without whom I would not be here (on this website, posting fanfic, I mean), so I hope she has a fabulous day! 💛