Sara's rested her palms on his chest. His heartbeat quickening under her touch. She moved her hands up toward his neck again. Her finger pads slowly touching his skin. It felt like helium was filling his body with each movement she made. His chest, his neck, everything she touched filled him with levity and tingled. His breath caught in his throat as he felt her long fingers intertwining in his salt and peppered curls. Her nails gently grazing his scalp.
And then suddenly, she was gone. He opened his eyes to see that she'd taken a small step backward. For a moment he panicked. Until,
"The only way to test a hypothesis is to look for all the information that disagrees with it."
His eyes flickered a moment before a smirk appeared at the corner of his lips. "Karl Popper." His whole body released tension he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "What's your hypothesis?"
"That we both are in."
He looked down for a moment. As if he were making a computation. Looking back up he locked with her eyes. "I'm in."
Her lips pursed in a failed attempt at masking her satisfaction. Five years, she thought with a breath of contentment rather than a hint of bitterness.
"Okay, then." Both brows flickered up. His fingertips touched together tentatively. Then with a small head nod and boyish grin he turned on his heels and moved toward the door. "And, uh, thank you for the tea." He spoke simply and closed the door behind him.
Sara furrowed her brows, her mouth left slightly agape in a quick progression from confusion to amusement. She shook her head and let her self fully smile for the first time. She walked back to her bedroom with some levity and turned the shower water back on. As she stood under the warm stream of water, her heart continued to race. She could still feel his lips against hers. The way the warmth traveled through her body into every crevasse. Her mind wandered as she rinsed off. The gravity of the day's events began to soak in. How they'd almost really lost Nick. How close it all really came when it was down to the wire. And how it shook something loose in Grissom. A little clog that had blocked part of his vision, perhaps.
Sara stepped out of the shower and shrugged her shoulders into the blue cotton robe she'd been wearing when she opened the door for him. She smiled at the thought. He had been barely a layer of fabric away from her. She wondered if he'd known he could have had sex tonight and he'd left anyway. Or if he was truly, naively, unaware.
She wiped away the steam from the mirror and fixed up her bun. May 22nd, it was a Sunday.
Over the next few shifts a delicate dance began to weave through their workplace communication. She found him musing aloud more, talking in riddles, generally removing some of the boundaries he'd built between the two. She found that she could step in close to him when they were side by side. Sleeves of their shirts brushing together.
Some moments felt like a synchronized dance. Standing over layout tables, sporting the same mannerisms. Finishing each others sentences and musing. Their shorthands became stronger. And the haze of tension and hesitation melted away. No longer impeding their behaviors.
And then there was a scene 6 hours north of Vegas. Called in as a quadruple murder. A mother, father, son and daughter. Though no bodies were yet accounted for. The team was dispatched to investigate. A job unfit for any local officers of this 6,000 person town. Catherine covered the lab while Nick, Warrick, Grissom, Sara and Greg made the trek north through stretches of desert and patches of destitute. They went straight to the scene and began analyzing the large pools of blood in the entry way and up the stairs.
After several hours collecting and analyzing the evidence, Sara decided to check into the motel despite the others still wrapping up. She got her room and settled in. Within the hour the rest of the team had followed suit. The two rooms left would be split between Grissom/Greg and Nick/Warrick.
Greg was increasingly nervous around Grissom. He felt like Grissom kept him at further than arm's length and he wasn't entirely wrong. Something about Greg made it easy for Grissom to be shorter with him. That evening Grissom was unsurprised to learn that greg slept with over-the-ear headphones, blasting a classic rock and white noise fusion. But he'd been irritated to learn that Greg had obstructive sleep apnea. In other words, he snored.
After five minutes of listening to the noisy breathing, Grissom stepped outside the room and leaned over a railing. A soft, night breeze tussled his hair and his shirt. He walked up the motel stairs and knocked softly on her door. He watched as she checked who it was.
"Hey." She opened the door. Her hair swept up in a bun. She stepped aside to let him in and closed the door behind him.
"Did Greg kick you out?" She pursed a smile as she walked back to the bed. A book open-side down laid on the pillow, the lamp light on and case files to her right were evidence he used to conclude she'd been up reading.
"Do you ever sleep?"
She shrugged, "Sometimes." She sat back down on the right side of the bed bringing the book back up to rest on her knees. He took her action as an invitation to walk further into the room. He kicked off his shoes and laid down on the left side.
His finger tips inspected the sheets. "Did you bring these?"
"Yeah." She spoke without looking up from her book. "I always bring my own sheets to a motel."
He smiled with amusement and leaned back further into the bed. His head laying comfortably propped on a pillow. He watched as she read. Tucking a hair behind her ear every so often as it would inevitably escape and obstruct her vision.
"So?" She asked, only briefly glancing up from her book.
"Greg snores."
She laughed readily, "I am not surprised, actually. He's fallen asleep during a couple of movies we've seen together.
"I think she's alive." He shifted gears as fluid as tar.
"The girl? I know you think we're going to recover a person. But everything in my experience tells me that we're going to uncover a body."
"There was gum at the house. In the driveway, on the boat."
"It's…a bit of a stretch Grissom."
"Yeah." He agreed with some reserve, "But something tell's me she's alive. She played Gretle in her school play this year. I think she left us a trail."
"I hope you're right." Sara spoke sadly as she tucked a bookmark covered in beetle illustrations into the book as she closed it. She leaned back a bit more now to recline closer to his position.
His fingers began to inch closer to hers with tender hesitation. Interlocked, feeling each other's warmth. She moved her fingers away from his. At first he'd been upset by the sudden absence of their hands together, but quickly changed his tune as he felt those same finger tips begin to trace their way up his wrist, his forearm, elbow, and back down.
He closed his eyes briefly and exhaled. Soaking in the feeling of her skin on his. It had been two weeks since Nick's abduction. Two weeks since they'd agreed to test the hypothesis. Two week's since they'd touched.
"You want to go over it." Her voice a statement disguised as a question.
He opened one eye. "Yes." Followed by a small smile. He readjusted himself, now sitting up right. Sara pulled the case files from the night stand and began laying the 8x10 photos in systematic piles.
Over the next hour they talked through the pools of blood. Pouring over every detail to decipher the timeline of events.
"It wouldn't make sense if the mom was were running down the stairs. The blood spatter's directionality suggests she was running up."
He thought a moment as he internalized her words. "So," He began, now glancing up at her, "So she could have been going to save the girl."
"Or, she was holding her, which would explain why the little girl didn't leave behind foot impressions."
"Possibly." He agreed. They continued to work the case, calling the lab back in Vegas to confirm results from evidence that had been delivered by currier earlier that morning.
Grissom hung up the phone, "Hodges confirmed the little's girls blood is not in that house."
"The boys said they took the boat out." Sara started slowly, speaking aloud as her thoughts began to form, "If you're dumping bodies in the water, you're going to want to go as far out as possible. So…"
"So they would have had to gas up. And lucky for us, gas stations have surveillance." He finished her thought with a glow.
"Exactly." She smiled easily.
"Brilliant." He exclaimed with childlike wonder. He put his hands on either side of her face and leaned in, pressing his lips to hers with enthusiasm. "I'll call the sheriff, get him to pull surveillance from every gas station between here and the docks."
She looked down at the files and photos and began to reorganize and put them away while Grissom chatted with the Sherif. A big smile swept across her face.
"Alright." Nick closed the trunk of his Denali. He took a brief glance as his watch. "Sara you riding with me?"
"I told Grissom I'd ride with him."
"Alright. Greg?"
"Yup." Greg opened the back door of Nicks car and threw in his overnight bag.
"See y'all tomorrow." Nick gave a nod Grissom's way as a walked out of building. Nick and Greg peeled out of the parking lot.
"Driving with me?" Grissom asked as he thew his overnight bag and kit in the trunk. Sara did the same as her response.
Sara fiddled with the radio as Grissom navigated toward the highway. The desert stretched out long ahead of them, the sun began to set to their right illuminating the sky in a pink and orange hue. It looked like a scene out of an old western.
"Did you see all the Pipeline Swallowtail by the lake's edges?" Sara leaned back more comfortably and settled in for the six hour drive back to the city.
Grissom's eyes shot to the right, catching himself shook, his jaw a little slack. He watched her smirk at the sight of his awed reaction.
"What?" She pursed back her smile.
"You noticed that?" He couldn't mask his surprise. He was impressed, and it was just as evident.
She shrugged, "Don't they secret a foul-smelling chemical to deter predators? We were looking for bodies… I noted it so it didn't confuse my sense of smell."
Every tiny muscle that makes up his face constricted with a splendor and amusement he'd not known could exist. While he'd been in love with her since the moment they'd met at the podium of that lecture hall in San Fransisco, it wasn't until that moment that he realized it.
She softly laughed off his speechlessness. "There's a whole section on Battus insects in that entomology textbook you gave me for Christmas."
He regained control of his jaw and smirked with boyish charm. "There were a few nearby when we found the child."
There was a moment of soft silence between them, "I'm glad you were right." Her hand touched his shoulder momentarily.
The conversation flowed easily between the two. They began discussing other insects she could recall from the textbook which lead them down a bath about plants that are hosts for such species. It'd been nearly two hours by the time they'd reached a plato down that tangent. A comfortable silence filled the air. Soft instrumentals played quietly through the speakers. The desert continued to stretch out boundlessly.
"My father was a botanist." He spoke with a hint of hesitation. But soon as he continued, that hesitation seemed to melt away. Like the more he spoke, the easier it was. "Well, in the end he taught botany at the local college. He died when I was nine."
"What happened?" Her tender curiosity kept her eyes on his profile as he focused on the road mostly. Stealing small glances infrequently.
"He came home one hot summer day and laid down on the couch. I was watching TV. Sitting a few feet from it. There was this Carl Sagan interview I'd been waiting all week to watch. My mom came in with a couple of cold drinks. She went to wake him but he never woke up. No one would tell me why." He tapped his thumbs a couple of times on the wheel, "Sometime's I wonder if she misses him or the idea of him. He's been gone for so long."
"Maybe it's both." She offered with the wisdom of experience. "Has she ever let anyone in since?"
"No. She's a bit reclusively. Like to get lost in her study."
"So you two are nothing alike."
That drive was the longest time spent together not working a case. Not hunched over a morgue table or a light table. Just present. Together. And with little pressure. They could both feel that surge of electricity charging back and forth between their bodies. It was more powerful then it was at work. It was unrestrained.
Before either had registered how long they'd been on the road, they were crossing into city limits. He pulled the car up in front of her building.
"You've been driving for six hours. Come up, grab a bottle of water." She suggested with a small shrug.
"That's okay. I'm only ten minutes from here." He shrugged, the car still idling.
"Griss," She turned to face him giving him a small, knowing smile.
He looked back at her confused, unsure what she was getting at. After a moment of him still not catching on she decided to go for it. She reached over the middle console and gently placed the palm of her hand on his thigh before moving it toward his inseam slowly.
His brows shot up high as his eyes took on shades of surprise and wonder. It caused her to laugh a little, softly but with the rasp of desire hidden beneath.
"Okay." He managed, finally understanding her. He got out of the car and the pair walked upstairs to her unit. After the door was closed behind them, she turned herself into him and placed her lips against his. She'd wanted to do that the whole drive. Stealing glances, feeling the tingle pulsate down her body as they traveled through the desert together.
"I have an experiemnt we can conduct to test our orginal hypothesis." She spoke softly upon breaking the kiss. She read his excitement in his eyes as blue hues darkened with desire. She took a step backward, pulled her hair out of it's bun and walked down the hallway. His brows kept dancing upward, finding new moments to be amazed with. He floated behind her, following her once his feet finally allowed him to move.
He paused in her bedroom's threshold. The tips of his shoes nearly crossing the door frame. She moved around the room, turning on a lamp. He felt the gravity of the moment on every level of the universe. The physical and theoretical, the literal and figurative, threshold he was about to cross. Wings fluttered and swelled in his gut.