Disclaimer: C.S.I still not mine; I'm just wishin'
and hopin'.
Title: Last Chance
Author: hazeleyes57
Rating: R
Spoilers: Up to season 3
and the presence of Grissom’s beard, which we know about from season 4, but I
haven’t seen much of it yet (season 4, not the beard).
Summary: G/S Sara needs Grissom’s advice.
Note:
After the lovely reviews for my last outing I’m a little worried about trying
anything else, but this idea popped in to my head while working on ‘Holiday
ch8’. I haven’t seen the idea as a fic anywhere but I
don’t pretend to have read them all anyway (I’m working on it!!).
Warning! This deals with
fertility issues that some people may find upsetting. It’s not something that I
take lightly and I mean no offence.
Last Chance
"There must be some mistake."
Sara Sidle stared at her Doctor but the woman's stark pronouncement was
not retracted.
"I'm sorry Sara, but it's true. I've had the lab. run the tests twice with the same results."
"But I'm only thirty three! How can this be?"
The doctor clasped her hands together over Sara's notes and looked
profoundly sorry to be giving her this news.
"It is unusual, but not unheard of. You are not the youngest case
I have here at my practise. Two months ago I gave the same news to a woman of
twenty eight."
Sara did not care at this moment about the other woman, only about
herself. It wasn't every day that you were told that you were perimenopausal. If she was lucky she had maybe a year left
before her periods stopped altogether. No periods meant…
"What are my chances if I want a baby?"
"At these levels of LH and FSH you probably have about seventy to
eighty percent chance of conceiving naturally, but the percentages will fall
and within a year, I'd estimate them down to ten to fifteen percent, maybe
less. If you have any plans for a child, you and your partner will have to
start trying now."
Sara was aghast. She had no idea
that the deterioration would happen that quickly.
How things could change in such a short time. A few hours ago she had
been blissfully unaware of Mother Nature’s time bomb.
Still in a state of shock, Sara thanked her Doctor and found herself
out on the sidewalk, clutching a sheaf of leaflets about help groups, therapy
and counselling.
She walked back to her
She had so much to think about. Setting aside for the moment the post
menopausal health issues, she concentrated on the more immediate problem.
Did she want a child?
A baby, like a husband, was something that she had thought about only
in vague terms, for some time in the future. There was plenty of time, and
let’s face it, there was only one person that she had thought of with any kind
of seriousness and he was not in the picture. Well, not really. Not unless you
counted lots of personal space violations, the flirting and the whole ‘chalk
dust’ incident.
Which was not exactly a proposal.
She had had to wait until she was almost killed in an explosion before
he called her ‘honey’.
Then he had turned down her dinner invitation.
Sara groaned aloud with remembered embarrassment.
“Find me a brick wall and I’ll just bang my head on it for a few
years.”
Except now she did not have a few years. She had one year. A last chance to have a child of her own.
If that was what she wanted.
Sara started the engine and drove home to her apartment. She had
finished her night shift before she went to see her doctor, and now she needed
sleep, food, and to think. And not necessarily in that order.
She made it home without incident and managed to have some breakfast.
She tried to sleep, but lay awake for a couple of hours, everything going round
and round in her head.
She gave up in the end and took a sleeping tablet.
She managed to drop off to sleep eventually but it was very restless
and plagued with nightmares.
She dreamt that she was in a large empty house. Somewhere a baby was
crying but every time she came close to finding it some shadowy figure would
take the baby away and tell her that she couldn’t have it.
Sara woke up crying, her face wet with tears.
She didn’t need a shrink to
figure out the message.
She needed to talk to someone about this. Her first instinct was to
think of Grissom. He had been her tutor, her mentor, and for a long while a good friend. She valued his opinion despite the
whole ‘unrequited love’ thing.
But this was too close to home.
Babies meant sex, usually, and she couldn’t see Grissom being
comfortable with the conversation.
Catherine. No, respect yes, but not close personal buds.
Warrick and Nicky. Nah,
male and squirmy. She’d still have to look them in the eye at work.
She was back to Grissom again. Her mind wouldn’t leave the poor guy
alone.
Crap.
Sara sat upright on her couch as a thought crossed her mind.
She would go and see Grissom about this problem, but present it to him
as the dilemma of ‘a friend’ of hers.
He would probably see through it in a minute, but so long as they both
pretended that they were talking about a third party, they could probably get
through it.
Sara thought about discussing it on the ‘phone with him, but she needed
to see his reactions, so that she’d know what he really felt, as opposed to
what he said. That meant going round to see him. Crap.
This wasn’t something that she could do during work hours. It wasn’t a
conversation that she wanted to start half a dozen times if they kept being
interrupted.
She looked at her watch. She would wait a few more hours; he was
probably still asleep.
^^^^^^
Sara looked at her watch for the twentieth time and tutted.
Normally time flew by for her, especially if she was caught up in some case or
other at work.
Just because she needed to talk to Grissom – but also dreaded it – time
seemed to crawl by.
She couldn’t settle enough to sleep any more herself,
so she had dusted and vacuumed her apartment and cleaned out her fridge.
She spent the last hour on the Internet to see what she could find out
about early menopause with regards to both her health and her fertility.
It was not happy reading.
She printed off several articles and a few research papers but couldn’t
find anything that told her what she wanted to hear.
Sara made herself a coffee and sat cross-legged on her sofa, the papers
scattered around her.
She picked up and read through the leaflets the doctor had given her,
but they were no real help.
She sighed heavily, leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes.
Did she or did she not want a baby?
Her brain supplied the answer almost immediately. Yes, one day, in the
future, when the time was right. With the right person.
Trouble was, the future was right now. And the
right person didn’t exist.
Who was she kidding?
The person she wanted to be with existed all right, he just was
oblivious – no… he wasn’t even that; he just ‘didn’t know what to do about
this’.
Crap. Lock us in a room with a bed and I’ll show him what to do about
‘this’.
Sara stopped herself from going down the well-worn path of what Grissom
wanted from her. He gave with one breath and took away with the next.
Sometimes she wondered if he knew what he was doing to her. He seemed
to play her like a fiddle. Every time she reached the end of her rope, he’d tie
a little knot in it that made her hang on again.
She glanced involuntarily at the plant on the windowsill, smiling a
little when she thought of the card that had come with it.
‘From Grissom’
Verbosity personified. Not.
She thought back to an earlier occasion when he had rendered her almost
speechless.
To this day she couldn’t watch ice hockey without remembering his
‘beauty’ comment.
The moment had been over before she could marshal her thoughts and by
then it had been too late.
Grissom had acted as if nothing
out of the ordinary had been said. He had wittered on
about starting from the other goal post - while she had been reminding herself
to breathe.
Then she had found out about Lady Heather.
All he had had to do was ask and Sara would cheerfully have tied him up
and whipped him if that’s what he’d wanted. Unfortunately at that time she
wouldn’t have had a sexual motive. More like one of revenge.
Sara got up stiffly from the sofa, rubbing her legs to restore the
circulation. She hadn’t intended to sit for that long. She felt nervous and
jittery and the coffee had probably been a bad idea. She headed for the
bathroom.
While she was in the shower she rehearsed what she would say to
Grissom.
‘Hi, I need your advice. ‘A friend’ has just discovered that her
biological clock is faulty and that the alarm should have gone off years ago.
Now it’s on a countdown to zero and she has less than a year left before…there
will be no chance of a child of her own. Do you think that she should try to
have her own child now, despite less than ideal circumstances, or should she
wait until the dust has settled and adopt, or give up the idea of a baby at
all? Oh, and by the way, she’d have to use a sperm bank because there is no guy
on the scene.’
Unfortunately she could imagine Grissom’s expression at this point and
it would not look like he was thinking, ‘Wow, I’d love to discuss this with
you. Sit down and I’ll get coffee.’
Sara rinsed her hair free of conditioner. She usually did some of her
best thinking in the shower. Something about the ionised water probably added a
little zip to the old brainwaves.
In the bath she was usually sleepy or randy.
Depending on the company.
As usual her brain zapped back to Griss.
Pity his company was only ever in her imagination.
“Not helping.”
Sara chastised herself for trying to side-track.
Fifteen minutes later she was
dressed and drying her hair into a straight bob. She was wearing a comfortable
pair of black pants and a white sleeveless T. She applied her usual make up,
nothing extra that might make Grissom wonder about her motives for visiting him
at home. She didn’t want to make him any more nervous than necessary.
She was already nervous enough for the both of them.
Sara checked her watch one last time. Grissom should definitely be
awake now.
Her hand hesitated over the telephone and she wondered if she should
let him know that she was coming over.
Nah.
It wasn’t until she was halfway to his place that all the reasons that
she should have called came to mind.
He might be out, or still asleep, or – God forbid – he might have
company. Or he might be in the shower. She allowed herself to think about that
for a few moments. It cheered her.
Sara parked the Denali in the space next to Grissom’s, knowing that his
townhouse had two allocated spaces.
He was either in, or out on foot, which meant that he wouldn’t be far
away.
Sara’s heart was in her mouth by the time that she reached Grissom’s
door.
She wiped her damp palms on the back of her pants, and double-checked
that she looked okay. She hitched the strap of her purse more firmly over her
shoulder and straightened her back.
Okay, she could do this.
This was Grissom, her mentor, and her friend. His advice would help.
All would be clear.
Sara swallowed nervously and before she could talk herself out of it,
she quickly rang the doorbell.
She mentally reviewed her ‘shower’ speech. A minute passed, which is a
long time to wait at a door. Her heart sank. All this angst and he was out. One
more try, just in case.
Sara rang the bell again and after a few moments she heard the door
being unlocked.
The door opened and Grissom stared at her with shocked surprise.
Sara felt awful. She had clearly woken him up. He was in a robe and his
hair was mussed.
She was unable to stop herself
from checking him out, then felt herself flush when their eyes finally met and
she realised that his cool blue gaze contained awareness of what she had been
doing.
Her speech deserted her. Grissom’s expression changed from surprise to
curiosity.
“Sara?”
He waited for her to say something, anything to explain her presence on
his doorstep.
He had been surprised to see her here. At first he had wondered if she
were a hallucination, brought about by the lack of sleep he had been suffering
recently. Despite what his clothing – or lack of it – might suggest he had not
been sleeping, merely lying in his bed wide-awake but exhausted.
He took pity on her in the end and stood back to open his door further.
She was stressed about something he knew by the very fact that she was here at
all.
“Since you’re here, you might as well come in.”
Grissom turned away from the door and went back inside the large airy
main room of the open plan townhouse. The blinds at the windows along the right
hand wall were angled to allow diffuse sunlight to warm but not overwhelm the
living space.
As Grissom walked over to the kitchen bar to make some coffee – more
out of social habit than a desire for the drink – he mused upon the Chinese
saying ‘be careful what you wish for’.
He had been lying in bed not fifteen minutes ago wishing that he could
retrieve the friendship that he and Sara had shared for so many years. Wished for the opportunity to talk to her without the interruptions
at work.
And now, here she was.
He looked up to see if she had entered the house or turned tail and
run.
Sara did not think that Grissom’s welcome had been that welcoming. He
didn’t give any indication if he cared one way or the other if she went or
stayed.
Jeez, great start to their ‘chat’, him pissed
that he’d been woken up.
She walked slowly into the main
room after quietly closing the front door.
Grissom looked up at her as she stood hesitantly by the dining table,
looking at him. She finally found her voice.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I thought that you’d be up – awake – by now.
Do you want me to go?”
Grissom appeared to give it some thought while Sara silently squirmed.
Finally he shook his head as he put two mugs out on the counter for the
coffee.
“No, I wasn’t…I was awake already.”
He changed his mind mid thought. Sara already looked as if she was
thinking of bolting and he had to admit to some curiosity about the purpose of
her visit.
“Oh.”
Sara had trouble meeting Grissom’s gaze. Every time she looked at him
she had to fight the urge to mentally remove the robe and imagine him naked.
He’d already caught her looking at him in a less than professional manner once
and she didn’t want to make him annoyed.
Grissom correctly interpreted her skittish gaze and a slightly sadistic
streak in him wanted to make her uncomfortable with his state of undress. Lord
knows she had made him uncomfortably aware of her on more than one occasion,
even if she hadn’t known that she was doing it.
He sighed inwardly.
“Take a seat, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Without waiting for a reply he headed into his bedroom and dressed
quickly in jeans and a polo shirt. He combed his hair and smoothed a hand over
his beard. He kept it trimmed short in deference to the heat in Vegas and it
looked tidy enough. He thought that he looked acceptable when he had a quick
glance in the mirror.
He didn’t examine his motive for wanting to look good.
Grissom had no idea that he looked like he’d just stepped off a yacht
or that the barefoot and bearded look was very ‘in’ at the moment.
Sara had taken a seat at the dining table. She felt that her
conversation would go a little better with the table between her and Grissom
rather than seated side by side on the brown leather couch.
She looked up when he returned, feeling both disappointed and relieved
that he had dressed. He looked very attractive and as usual a frisson of
awareness pulsed through her body.
She watched him cross to the percolator and pour out two mugs of
coffee. He did not ask her preference but added lo-fat cream without sugar, the
way that she usually had it at work.
Grissom crossed back to the dining table and placed the mug in front of
her. He took a seat at the table. Sara held the coffee but didn’t move to pick
it up. She briefly met his gaze.
“Thanks.”
Grissom nodded once in acknowledgement. He leaned to his right, resting
his elbow on the arm of his chair, and moved his hand to rest two fingers on
his cheek, the thumb and two smallest fingers under his chin. He raised his
eyebrows in the universal gesture of ‘so what do you want?’
Sara knew that the time had come. She partially chickened out and
looked at the surface of her coffee instead of Grissom.
“I…erm…got a call today from a friend of mine
back in ‘Frisco. She and I go way back.”
Sara paused, her heart going like a trip hammer. Grissom didn’t
interrupt or prompt her, for which she was grateful.
“She’s had some bad news recently. Had a routine medical and discovered
that she’s going through premature menopause. She…ah…she’s only in her early
thirties and it’s kinda thrown her for a loop, y’know?”
Sara didn’t expect a reply to her rhetorical question so she soldered
on. As she was looking more at the coffee than Grissom, she failed to see his
expression become more alert as he listened.
“Anyhow, she’s been told that she has less than a year left to get
pregnant. Thing is, she wanted a kid later, when it was the right time, with
the right guy, and all that stuff. Only now there will be no ‘later’. It’s now
or nothing. And it might still be ‘nothing’ anywise. I don’t know what to tell her. Should she try
now, or wait until it’s all over and adopt or just not bother?”
Grissom shifted in his seat and reached out for his coffee. He looked
at Sara but she wouldn’t meet his eye.
His instincts told him something
was ‘off’ with this conversation.
“What does your friend’s husband think?”
“She’s not married.”
“Her partner?”
“No partner, significant other, live in lover
or potential thereof. It will have to be a ‘bank’ job.”
Grissom put his coffee down untasted,
the stirrings of alarm making him cautious.
“What precisely do you want my help for?”
Sara met his gaze for the first time and held it steadily.
“I’m too close, I can’t see the wood for the
trees. I don’t know what to do, I mean, to tell her what to do. You can look at
it more logically than me.”
Grissom sifted through what had been said and what had been left
unsaid.
“Logically the most sensible direction would be to let nature take its
course. If she is single, works full time and I presume has limited funds and
no overwhelming desire to be a mother, my advice would be to forget it.”
Grissom saw Sara’s face fall. Her gaze dropped to her coffee again so
he couldn’t read her as well as he would have liked.
He felt the strangest urge to
comfort her with a different response.
“However, if you look at it from the more emotional point of view and
she really wants to go to all the trouble and expense of this process, then she
will have her answer. Does she want a child and how much? Those are the
questions your friend should ask herself.”
There was silence for several moments while Sara contemplated what he
had said. She took a sip of her coffee, then another, stalling.
Sara realised that she had the answer to her question already. She did
want a baby. She would try for six months and if it failed to result in a child
of her own she would give up. Grissom had merely helped her to focus her
thoughts. As soon as he had said ‘forget it’ she had instinctively reacted with
a strong ‘no’ in her head. She wanted a child more than she had realised. Enough to not be concerned about any other consequences.
Other women were single parents, they coped with a
child and a career. She was sure that she could too.
Grissom watched the play of emotions over Sara’s face and knew the
moment that she had reached some sort of conclusion.
Sara looked up from her coffee and smiled at Grissom.
“Thanks, you have helped me. I know what to do now.”
She started to stand up. Grissom waved her back down to her seat.
“Finish your coffee.”
“It’s okay, I - ”
“Just drink your coffee Sara.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “There’s
some other advice you might want to pass on to your friend.”
Sara sat back down abruptly. She recognised the look in his eyes as the
one he got at work when he knew that the interviewed suspect had said something
to give himself away.
“What’s that?”
Her voice sounded wary. She wondered if she imagined the slight
emphasis that he put on the word ‘friend’.
“Tell your friend to go to a reputable sperm bank. There have been
cases recently, as you know, about incorrect samples going to the wrong
patients – you may recall the twins. That case where the consultant ‘supplied’
every patient himself. There was a case in
Sara’s jaw had begun to drop as Grissom went through his ‘advice’.
Where did he get all this stuff? Another obscure forensic
journal with a lengthy title?
He wasn’t finished.
“Tell her to make sure that they screen for sexually transmitted
disease including HIV, all of the hepatitis variants, and drugs of abuse, then - ”
“Grissom!”
Sara wondered for a bizarre moment if he were trying to put her off. Or rather, her ‘friend’.
“Yes?”
He looked surprised at the interruption.
Sara continued more gently.
“I’ll tell her all that. I’m sure that they have some sort of
accredited medical register for that sort of thing.”
Grissom contrived to look doubtful.
“Even so, she should be very careful. How well do you know this friend
of yours?”
“As well as I know myself.”
And that, thought Grissom, was probably the truest thing that she had
said today.
The silence seemed to Sara to drag on while Grissom looked at her. She
had no idea what he was thinking.
Which was just as well.
Grissom was dismayed. He needed a few moments to process what he had
heard. He had all the information he required, it just needed putting in order.
The first thing that he was virtually certain about was that Sara’s perimenopausal friend did not exist.
Which meant that she was talking about herself.
Sara would not have come to his place to ask him about a ‘friend’. She
would have dropped her question into casual conversation at work, just a quick
survey of his opinion. She had come here today because she did not want to be
interrupted in the middle of such an intensely personal conversation.
He absently watched the colour come and go in Sara’s face. She was
probably rehashing everything in her head as she drank her coffee.
Grissom sat behind his poker face façade, trying to leave Sara with her
dignity intact. The friendship that they had even five years ago would have
enabled him to comfort her, but now he was keenly aware of the awkwardness
between them. He regretted the distance that separated them, leaving her unable
to confide the truth to him or take comfort from him.
Grissom stirred at last and picked up his coffee. He took a drink and
carefully replaced the mug on the table.
Sara watched every move while trying not to be noticed noticing.
Grissom looked at Sara and waited until he had established eye contact.
“In that case, tell your friend to stop smoking, drinking and partying,
and to start taking folic acid supplements. Tell her to go and see the OB/GYN
that will be looking after her to see if they run a pre-pregnancy health
program. If they don’t, tell her to find another OB/GYN.”
Sara’s eyebrows were trying to climb into her hairline. She couldn’t have
been more surprised if Grissom had sprouted wings. Her mouth had dropped open
half way through his first sentence. He never ceased to amaze her with either
astonishing gaps in his knowledge or these sudden mines of information on
subjects that you didn’t expect him to know much about.
She suddenly realised that he was waiting for a response from her.
“Ah, yeah, I…I’ll make sure that she does that.” Her eyes slid away
from his then came briefly back. “Thanks.”
Grissom shrugged, aiming for a careless ‘it’s nothing’ look.
There was a long moment of silence that Sara did not know how to fill.
She couldn’t think of anything to say without resorting to talking about work.
Grissom managed not to jump when Sara suddenly stood up. She waved
vaguely at her still half-full coffee mug.
“Thanks for the drink, but I gotta go. Thanks
again for your help.”
Sara made it half way to the door before Grissom’s voice stopped her.
“Wait.”
Sara halted and looked back at him over her shoulder.
Grissom hadn’t moved from the table when he had called her, but now he
stood and crossed to within two feet of her, so she had to turn and face him.
His blue gaze seemed to penetrate straight through her and for a second she
felt panicky, thinking that he had figured it all out.
“One other important thing. If your friend is
determined to do this - to take this course of action - then I strongly advise
her to confide in her manager. It will make things a lot easier at work if her
department head or whoever knows that she may be under additional stress and
may need short notice time off for various appointments. Or because she is
ill.”
Grissom had seen the momentary panic in her eyes and knew now for
certain that there was no ailing friend.
Sara nodded jerkily.
“Yeah, good idea. I’ll be sure to tell
her.”
She spun away from him and walked to the door. Grissom got there first
and their hands met unexpectedly on the door lock.
Sara pulled back as if stung, trying to hide the fact that his touch
had been electrifying.
She felt her face flame and her gaze involuntarily locked with
Grissom’s. She couldn’t tear herself away.
She expected a degree of sympathy for her ‘friend’ or maybe nothing at
all in Grissom’s eyes, but what she didn’t expect to see was the flare of
desire that told her that he had felt the shock too. For a long moment she
forgot the original purpose of her visit.
Grissom finally blinked and released Sara from his thrall, belatedly
opening the door for her.
She nodded an embarrassed ‘thank you’ and
looked down at the floor as she left the town house.
It wasn’t fair.
He even had nice feet.
^^^^^^
For the second time in the same day, Sara did not start up the
That had been an exhausting few minutes. She couldn’t believe that she
had been side-tracked completely by the simple touch of Grissom’s hand to hers.
Even worse was the confirmation that he was not entirely unmoved by it
himself.
Not that he had any intention of doing anything about it.
Sara sat up slowly and opened her eyes.
Now that she had spoken to Grissom and decided on a course of action,
she felt curiously deflated, as if she should be more excited somehow. She
started up the engine and reversed out of the parking space.
She was halfway home when she isolated the cause of her depression.
Despite any and all signs to the contrary, in her heart of hearts she
had always believed that any child that she had would have been fathered by
Grissom. It was sobering to realise that it was never going to happen now.
By the time Sara reached her apartment she was barely keeping it
together. She dropped her purse on her couch as she went through to her
bedroom. She sat down on the side of her bed and plucked a tissue from the box
on the nightstand. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, but fresh tears ran down
her face. The shock of everything caught up with her and she turned her face
into her pillow and cried her heart out.
Eventually she had no more tears left to shed and exhausted, she
slipped into sleep.
^^^^^^
Grissom walked past the break room on his way to his office. As usual
he glanced in to see if anyone else was in yet.
The room was empty but he didn’t need to look at his watch to know that
he was at least half an hour early. Just a few minutes ago he had managed to
avoid bumping in to Conrad Ecklie. If nothing else it got his night off to a
better start than it would have if he had been stopped by the day shift
supervisor.
He was only mildly concerned that Sara did not appear to be in yet.
Unless, of course, she was already busy in one of the labs.
With the ease of long practice he tried to put Sara to one side in his
thoughts. Sometimes it was more difficult to do than at other times and tonight
looked like being one of those nights.
He reached his office and stowed his briefcase besides his desk. He
checked on his eight legged friends and turned his day planner to the current
date, checking at the same time to see if he had to be anywhere else tonight.
No.
Grissom dropped the post he had collected downstairs on his desk. He
had a quick run through the envelopes, sorting them in to ‘now’ and ‘later’
piles. He dropped two pieces of junk mail in to the circular ‘never’ file on
the floor.
He seated himself at his desk and picked up the assignment slips to
organise who he thought best suited to each job. There was one that would suit
Sara if he were partnered with her. He had been guilty in the past of
deliberately not working with her because he wanted to avoid ending up in some
sort of discussion about their ‘situation’. He came to realise that he had been
unfair to her, because, give her her due, she had
tried to be professional about it.
Most of the time.
He had realised that it was his problem too, not just hers. He was the one that was worried HE might
bring up the subject.
Tonight was different. If Sara was going to admit that she was the
‘friend’ that they had discussed and tell her ‘boss’ about her plans, he wanted
to give her the opportunity to do it away from the rest of the staff.
He sighed. Sara was centre stage again.
^^^^^^
Catherine Willows looked at the watch on her slim wrist for the second
time in as many minutes. She knew that Gil was in, she
had seen his
Odd that neither of them had made an appearance yet,
even if the shift had only just started.
Warrick leaned back on his seat, laying an arm along the back of the
seat beside him. He observed Catherine’s impatient glance at her watch and
wondered if anything was bugging her. She had been sharper and more ‘savvy’
lately; almost aggressive in her ‘I’m coping just fine’ attitude. He wondered
if she was overcompensating, feeling – erroneously – that she had something to
prove. It occurred to him that Eddie’s death had probably added to her burdens
of single parenthood. Not that Lindsey was a burden in any way whatsoever, but
no one could pretend that it was easier with one adult instead of two raising a
family.
Not for the first time he contemplated asking Catherine out on a date.
Also not for the first time he talked himself out of it. He didn’t know if she
was ready to start seeing anyone yet. He was keenly aware of the working
dynamics of the night shift. The obvious tension between Sara and Grissom had
become a factor in decisions at work, even though he thought that nothing had
happened between them. Admittedly he and Catherine didn’t have the same kind of
grade difference, but he was concerned all the same and that made him
hesitant.
Some days it was a relief just to get out of the building without
having told either Gil or Sara to just screw each other and get over it. He
felt a bubble of laughter rise up in him as he visualised the probable expression
on Gil’s face. Man, he would just die.
Warrick coughed into his hand to hide the grin on his face.
Nick turned to Warrick and saw his amused eyes above his fist.
“Hey, War?”
Nick’s voice was quiet, just getting Warrick’s
attention.
“Yeah?”
Nick grinned.
“Heard this great joke.”
“Shoot.”
“There’s this guy lyin’ in a hospital bed,
real sick, like. He’s got tubes in his nose and chest, he’s linked up to the
heart monitor, and he’s wearin’ an oxygen mask too.
This nurse comes on to the ward, it’s her first day, and this guy says to her
‘Are my testicles black?’ and she don’t know what to do. She says ‘I’m not
qualified to check.’ The guy says ‘please nurse, just tell me, are my testicles
black?’ and the nurse, she thinks what harm can it do to check? So she pulls
back the covers and checks out his meat and two veg.
She covers him back up and says ‘as far as I can see, they are fine.’ The guy
pulls off his oxygen mask and says, ‘That was very
nice thank you, but can you tell me if my test results are back?’”
There was a split second of silence before Warrick guffawed with
laughter. The more he thought about the joke, the funnier it got. Nicky was
grinning too as Warrick continued to laugh, attracting Greg and Catherine’s
attention, and that of Grissom, who had just entered the break room.
Warrick wiped his streaming eyes and tried to contain himself.
Nick held his clenched fist out horizontally to Warrick and Warrick
shook his head in admiration as he butted his fist to Nicky’s in salute. Still
grinning, he muttered just loud enough for Nick to hear.
“ You better watch yourself. Payback’s a
bitch.”
Nick just smirked.
Grissom cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention.
They settled down and he distributed their assigned tasks. He kept
Sara’s and his in reserve, aware – as everyone else was – that Sara was not
present. Her presence was not so vital that it was worth trying her cell yet.
He continued with the briefing, ensuring that everyone present was up to speed
on all current cases.
Just as Grissom and Catherine were leaving the break room, Sara turned
the corner at the far end of the corridor. She was wearing her lab. coat and carried a tray holding several evidence bags. When
she saw the others leaving the break room her consternation was obvious. She
looked at the wall clock and muttered under her breath. Grissom’s lip twitched
when he read her lips.
His amusement faded when it became obvious to him that Sara had been
crying recently. She looked pale and her eyes were bloodshot. His concern for
her made his voice come out more gruffly than he had intended.
“You missed the assignment briefing.”
Sara looked momentarily taken aback, her glance flicking between
Catherine and Grissom, but then her expression closed.
“Yeah, sorry about that. I lost track of time.
What did I miss?”
Grissom looked at the contents of the tray Sara was holding and
realised that she must have been working for at least an hour or more on the
bags.
“You’re with me. I’ll fill you in on the way out to our DB. Five
minutes.”
Sara nodded, making an effort not to look surprised at the unexpected
pairing with Grissom, then moved past him on her way to store the evidence
under lock and key.
Grissom was aware that Catherine had watched the whole interchange and was
now itching to say something about Sara missing the briefing and not being
chastised. He turned back to her and nodded towards Warrick, who was patiently
waiting for Catherine.
“Your ride’s ready.” He said, sounding innocent.
Catherine gave him a double take, but couldn’t decide if Gil was
pulling her chain or not.
“So he is.” She gave him a searching look but didn’t push it. “Later.”
She turned on her heel and strode away without bothering to wait for a
response.
Grissom looked after her for a moment then turned back - the way Sara
had gone - to go to his office.
Several minutes later Grissom looked up from his desk to see Sara
standing in the doorway of his office. She seemed strangely reluctant to enter
the room. When she saw that she had his attention she smiled too brightly and
said that she was ready.
Grissom had already completed reading the report in front of him but he
left the file open.
“Come in, I won’t be a minute.”
At his direct invitation Sara entered the office but remained standing
beside one of the shelf units, ostensibly looking at the specimens.
Grissom waited to see if Sara was going to refer to their conversation
at his house, but after a couple of minutes it was clear that she wasn’t going
to, so he closed the file, stood up and collected his kit.
As the two of them left the office, Sara gradually relaxed. She had
been worried that Grissom was going to ask her about her ‘friend’ when she
arrived at his office, but he had obviously decided not to bring the subject
up.
She turned her mind to the fact that she was working with Grissom for
the first time in a while and decided that she would just try to enjoy it, as
she would have done a few years ago.
She made a conscious effort to leave the baggage behind but it was
easier said than done.
Grissom turned to her as they walked.
“We have to go via the stock room. I need to pick up some print lifting
tape and some more swabs, I’m down to my last twenty.”
Sara made herself look casually at him.
“Sure, no problem. I could pick up a few
bits myself while I’m there.”
They both headed for the stock room, a smallish room that was
windowless because it was internal. It always struck Sara as odd, like a
make-work room, because the rest of the building was predominately glass walled
on the inside.
As soon as she followed Grissom inside, the fire door closer shut the
door automatically. The heavy door muffled the sounds of the busy staff outside
and made Sara feel very aware that she was alone with Grissom.
It felt very intimate, just the two of them.
With brisk economical movements Grissom collected the supplies he
required and snapped his case shut.
Sara inwardly jumped at the sound. While she had been practically day
dreaming Griss had finished. She hurriedly picked up a few things: tape, swabs,
evidence bags and a handful of latex gloves from the ‘small’ size glove box.
With Grissom looking at her with his eyebrows raised as if to say ‘you done
yet?’ she jammed everything in her field kit case without looking too closely
at where it was going. When her case wouldn’t close properly, Grissom calmly
took hold of the single glove hanging out of the side of it and pulled it free.
He handed the glove to Sara without saying anything, and for some odd reason
she couldn’t explain she felt herself flush. She quickly flung the recalcitrant
glove back in the case and slammed the lid.
Of course Grissom noticed her heightened colour.
Sara became even more flustered. She felt completely rattled and there
was no reason for it at all.
She just had the bizarre feeling that Grissom had known what she had
been thinking about the two of them being alone together.
With latex.
“You okay?”
Grissom’s enquiry seemed innocent enough but Sara wasn’t taking the
chance of looking at him to find out. She turned and headed for the door,
forcing herself not to hurry.
“Yep, sure. Fine. You
ready to go?”
Grissom didn’t point out the
obvious – that he’d been ready before Sara – but instead took it as a
rhetorical question and followed behind her.
He filed away for later contemplation the feeling that something had
happened here that he had missed. Sara was almost as skittish as she had been
this morning at his townhouse.
Even though he was fully clothed.
As soon as Sara climbed in the
vehicle beside Grissom she was transported back to this morning when their
hands had collided on the door lock.
She wondered why she had this sudden extra awareness around him.
It was as if someone or something had turned up her senses. She picked
up a combination of deodorant, a hint of toothpaste and the essential warm male
smell that was unique to him.
She could hear the sigh of the car seat as Grissom climbed in the
driver’s side, the slightly gritty sound of his shoes on the rubber mat in the footwell and the subdued tinkle of metal as he put the keys
in the ignition.
She could see with startling clarity the way that his salt and pepper
curls had already started to break free of the tidy comb through and her hand
itched to touch them, to ruffle them further, leaving Grissom tousled and sexy.
Damn she had it bad today.
She felt hypersensitive with an extra awareness about her own body’s
reactions to stimuli. She could feel the way her clothes touched and rubbed on
her skin. The only comparable thing that she could think of was a mild case of
sunburn. On top of that Grissom’s proximity was – as usual - making her
aroused. Her nipples peaked and she clenched her thighs together to try to
relieve the pressure at the juncture of her legs.
As soon as she had buckled up
she folded her arms over her chest just in case he glanced at her during their
journey.
Sara crossed her long legs at the knee and then realised how defensive
she looked and felt silly. She uncrossed her legs, trying to make it look
casual.
She didn’t dare look at Grissom.
She would be mortified if he were looking at her with the same knowing
look that he had had this morning when she had been caught checking him out.
Thirty seconds later she risked a quick glance under the guise of
reading a passing sign that she had read a hundred times before.
Grissom was looking forward at the slow moving traffic in front of the
Denali, a frown of concentration on his forehead. He did not appear to have
noticed what Sara was doing.
She knew as well as anyone that appearances could be deceptive.
Grissom was concentrating on his driving, taking care not to crowd the
vehicle in front of him. He found that he was having
to focus hard on the traffic because he was finding it more difficult than
usual to ignore the woman seated beside him. Damn near impossible since this
morning’s conversation.
So he was also mentally reciting the stages of meiosis.
‘The prophase, phase two, consisting of the five
stages; leptotine, zygotine,
pachytene, diplotene and diakinesis.’
For the less able the mnemonic
‘little zebras pee down drains’ had been employed as he recalled.
He hadn’t needed it.
He gritted his teeth as Sara moved in her seat again. She had hardly
stopped squirming in her seat since she had got in the vehicle, and it was as
distracting as hell.
Hence his biology revisit. It wasn’t helping
the way that he hoped it would. He gripped the wheel firmly, his knuckles
turning white.
He could smell her and it tantalised him. He knew that she – like
Catherine – did not wear perfume to work in case it dulled their sense of smell
at a crime scene. He figured that it must be her soap or shampoo. Maybe her shower gel.