Alternate Universe

Rating: R
Pairing: Grissom/Sara
Category: Romance
Spoilers: Little references here and there, but we've all seen all the episodes by now, right?
Archive: Sara and Grissom and my site http://www.pink-martini.net/amanda/
Disclaimer: I don't have any rights to CSI or its characters. Ergo, anything I write using those characters belongs to the entities that do own them. Don't sue me, I'm a single mother. (It always seems to work for Catherine.)

Feedback: Love it, but no flames please I'm fragile!!

Author's Note: Thanks to Jo and Danielle for convincing me to ditch the extraneous case. You are the best!

Note bene: The first part  is pure G/S fluff that would be considered tame by the average 12-year-old today. They could even show it on CBS. The second part  should be avoided at all costs by minors, people with high blood pressure, people with sexual hang-ups, and G/C shippers.

Summary: G/S. Post-ItB. Sara's never liked bugs, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. RST.

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Chapter 1 - Bugs are a girl's best friend

"Mind if I watch?" Sara asked from the doorway.

"Where are you on your case?" Grissom asked stiffly, pinning an insect to a foam board.

"We are done with our part, for now anyway. Just waiting for Brass to bring in suspects," she answered, to justify her presence. "It's not often we get a case dependent on entomology. I'd like to watch and learn more about it, if it's okay with you."

"Have you ever taken an entomology course?" Grissom asked doubtfully, already surmising the answer, hoping Sara would accept this slight rebuff and leave him to his work, leave him in peace.

"No. But I did take a seminar once from one of the premier forensic entomologists in the country... maybe the world," she gushed at him, smiling.

"That was a just an introductory seminar, as I recall," he said dismissively, impaling another black blowfly onto the board. Why he would recall such details about a seminar almost ten years ago eluded him.

"That's true," she said, leaning over to see around him from her vantage point at the door. "But everyone's got to start somewhere."

He turned his head slightly towards her, and was amused to see her leaning over at a precarious angle to see the board. Relenting, he jerked his head from her direction towards the board, letting her know she had his permission to approach.

She chose a lab stool to sit on, a foot or so from Grissom, to his right side. She wanted to be close enough to see the tiny creatures, but far enough away to not impede Grissom's movements or make him feel crowded. She realized he had spent weeks steadily increasing the already-large distance between them, and she didn't want to push him too quickly, knowing he would probably react by redoubling his efforts to run from her.

She hadn't really planned this out, but she knew that she had to find some common ground with him again. It used to be casework, but he didn't work with her much anymore. She was never crazy about bugs, but he was. If she could just prove to him that they could still work together, maybe things could get back to normal. If that meant feigning interest in his insects, then it's a sacrifice well made. She might even accidentally learn something useful.

He had been reticent to allow her entrance, not only because he had worked hard to avoid her for many months, but also surmising that she would interrupt him with questions that would distract him. He was pleasantly surprised that she merely sat and watched everything he did intently, occasionally jotting something down on a notepad in her lap.

"Do you have any questions?" he asked, the suspense of waiting for her to speak driving him to break the silence himself.

"Yes, but I'm writing them down. I can ask you some other time when you aren't busy. I don't want to disturb you," she answered.

"Thoughtful, but I don't mind if you ask questions." He couldn't pinpoint what had changed his mind, but there was something in her easy manner that had defused some of the anxiety he had felt when first she had shown up unbidden.

"My main question is, why do you have to watch them all the way until they mature to backtrack when the eggs were laid? Can't you just see when the eggs or pupae or whatever hatch and count back from there?"

"That's a good question. I could in some cases, but it wouldn't be as precise. Every insect has a fairly predictable life cycle, but each is still an individual. It may mature a little faster or a little slower than average. If I watch how it progresses from each stage of maturation to the next, I can get a good bead on whether it's average. That helps the linear regression back to the deposit of the egg to be more precise. Like anything else, the more points of reference, the more confidence you can have in the validity of the data."

"What is the procedure, in general?" she asked.

"Every few hours I look at each insect and log the changes I see. The backbone of this kind of analysis is documentation. You have to document the exact time that you made the observations because their life cycles are typically so short."

"What are you looking for?" she asked, pen at the ready.

"Changes in size, conformation, coloration, sexual maturity - things like that," he answered.

"Would it take someone at the Ph.D. level to recognize those things, or is it something I could learn?" she asked, leaning towards the board to look closely at the pinned insects through a magnifying glass.

"While there is a multitude of insect species, there are only a limited number who feed on carrion and live in the Las Vegas area, so I don't see why you couldn't become familiar enough with them to be able to do the analysis yourself. You could probably take an entomology course at UNLV to get you started."

"Can't you teach me? You haven't taught me anything new in a long time," she said in a mock-whine, theatrically pretending to pout.

"Since when have you become interested in forensic entomology?" Grissom challenged her.

"Since I met you," she said matter-of-factly.

To say that Grissom was stunned would be an understatement. He forgot to breathe for several seconds, his mind went numb, and his face showed it all clearly. Did she mean it, or was she throwing his own words back in his face?

Sara didn't intend to, but she burst out laughing at his reaction, her hands alternating between covering her mouth and pointing in the general direction of his face. "You should see the look on your face, Grissom! Priceless! God, I hope I didn't look like that! Please tell me I did not  look like that!"

Seeing that he was still not getting the humor of the situation, she added, "Oh, come on! Lighten up! It had no more significance when I said it than it did when you said it."

"I think you'd do better to take a formal class," he said perfunctorily, turning back to the board to hide. He knew it was irrational, but he was hurt that she was invalidating one of the few emotionally honest things he ever said aloud to her.

"Grissom, how much longer are you going to punish me professionally for personal transgressions? I think it's sufficient for you to punish me personally, don't you?" she asked, without rancor.

"It was not my intent to punish you professionally over personal differences," he stated, uncertainty wavering his voice.

"Is that sort of like an apology? Because, to be honest, I don't understand why you're the one acting all hurt and rejected. I would think that's my line. But I'm trying to behave in a cordial, professional manner. I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same."

"Discomfort in one area is bound to spill over into the other. Perhaps you can see now why I don't like to mix business with pleasure," he said, justifying his past and present behavior towards her.

"You know, if I work it just right, I could almost find a compliment in there," she said, hopping off the stool to leave him standing confused in the middle of the workspace.

* * * * *

He didn't expect her to come back after her assignment the next night. He wondered to himself if there was a limit to the number of times he could push her away, only to have her return. He vacillated between admiration for her determination and pity for her masochism.

But return she did, and instead of confronting him, as he had feared, she immediately launched into examining all the live samples he had sitting on the table, as though nothing unpleasant had happened. 'If everyone in the world was as patient and forgiving as Sara, I'd be out of a job,' he mused to himself.

"Some beetle larvae look a little like maggots, but the difference is that maggots have no legs and the beetle larvae have three tiny sets of legs," Grissom explained, handing Sara a jar containing a Cochliomyia macellaria  maggot and a jar with a Necrophila americana  beetle larva to compare.

"Most blowfly larvae look pretty much the same. You usually can't be sure what they are until they pupate and hatch the adult. The beetle larvae are sometimes more recognizable, though not always."

"Wow, Grissom, I didn't know that some of the beetles were so pretty," she said, picking up a jar with an adult beetle, a splotchy yellow pattern playing over its smooth black exoskeleton.

"That's the American Carrion Beetle, Necrophila americana . It's common all over America, and as its name indicates, it feeds solely on carrion."

"What's this one with the red spots on it? It's pretty, too," Sara remarked with surprise.

It's Nicrophorus orbicollis , the Sexton Beetle. We're lucky to be able to collect at night, since both of those beetles are nocturnal."

"I never thought of beetles as being beautiful. Butterflies, yes. Beetles, no. I guess I usually thought of them all as being ugly, brown, cockroach-looking things. No offense to your roaches," she said, holding up a conciliatory hand.

"None taken," Grissom chuckled. "There are about 700,000 species of insects that have been identified to date, and we estimate that there are millions more. It stands to reason that some would be more attractive than others," he said.

"You'd expect something that lives off carrion to be disgusting looking, not attractive. There's probably a cosmic lesson in there, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," she laughed.

There was something about hearing her laugh that reached deep inside of him. He couldn't help but laugh with her, for the first time in over a year. And for a moment, they were both happy.

* * * * *

"How do you keep them still long enough to measure them!" Sara complained, having returned the next night to an unexpected invitation to help. "Oh my God! Escapee!" she squealed, trying to catch the young beetle as it skittered across the bench and under some papers. Sara gingerly lifted the papers, and the beetle shot out the other direction. "Damn, he's fast. And tricky."

"Be careful!" Grissom warned. "Don't injure it or it will be useless to us."

"Freeze!" she commanded, slamming a cupped hand down on the counter. Grissom winced as she slowly curled her fingers under to scoop up the beetle. She opened her hand over the jar and the bug dropped down, no worse for the experience. Grissom sighed his relief, having fully expected a handful of shattered chitin and goo to fall out of her gloved hand.

"You have to hold them still, Sara, but not too tightly. You get used to the amount of pressure to use after you've squashed a few by accident," he said, eliciting an "Eeeeeew!" from Sara. "Maybe you should stick to the larvae and the pupae for tonight. They don't have legs," he suggested.

"That's fine for this case, but at some point I've got to practice with more mature bugs," she said.

"We'll go out and collect you some bugs to play with when it's slow at the lab. Or after work sometime. Maybe in the morning, if nothing comes up between now and then," Grissom offered without second-guessing himself.

"Sweet!" Sara exclaimed, squeezing Grissom's forearm, then spinning around to start measuring the various pre-adult insects. He was sure that, if he took off his lab coat, there would be a perfect handprint burned into his flesh.

Grissom didn't return to his work immediately, but instead watched Sara from a few feet behind her. He hated to admit it, but he was enjoying this evening immensely. Sara was always a willing and apt student, which makes teaching much more fulfilling. But more than that, she seemed at ease with him again, like 'before'.

He wondered if it could be like it was back then - working closely together, talking, touching - completely at ease with each other, yet the room crackling with sexual tension. Sometimes it was torture, but it was the sweetest torture ever devised.

At the time, he thought that his unwillingness to resolve the tension made him miserable. But in this last year he has found out that having no contact at all was even more miserable, though easier to manage in ways.

He felt compelled to slowly move up behind her, a little to her left side. His chest ended up no more than an inch from her body, stopping only when he could feel her warmth coming through her lab coat. Taking in a quiet whiff, he could smell the shampoo scent left in her hair, and he closed his eyes and formed a mental picture of her smiling broadly at him, then coyly looking down. The image brought a smile to his usually impassive face.

Sara knew where he was - she could feel him, his heat and his aura reached out to her, warming her back first, then radiating out to her whole body. It had been a long time since she'd experienced that feeling, and she wanted to drink it in while it lasted. She didn't move or indicate that she was aware he was there. She was trying to avoid the retreat she knew would eventually come. She focused solely on the moment, experiencing it, memorizing it so that she could replay it whenever she needed to feel him.

After a few moments, she sensed him shifting, and Sara fully expected him to back away and prepared herself emotionally for the retreat. But instead he leaned his head forward and looked over her shoulder at the insect she was working with. His chin was almost resting on her shoulder, but not quite. His cheek was almost touching hers, but not quite. He looked up from the specimen and slowly turned his face just slightly so that he could look at her, his eyes turned all the way to the side, exploring every inch of her face that was exposed to him.

She kept her eyes down on the specimen, though she wasn't concentrating on it at all. She could feel him looking at her; she could see his eyes exploring her face out of her peripheral vision. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to turn to look at him, to meet his eyes. She desperately wanted to, but she knew it was necessary to pretend to be unmoved and unaffected, but not rejecting, if she wanted to prolong the sweet agony of his closeness.

He looked back down at the specimen, knowing she had not made a move to measure or examine it in any way, but pretending he didn't notice. Sara couldn't keep the smile from tugging at the corners of her lips, and she finally found the strength to pick up the calipers and measure the maggot. She set down the instrument and recorded the length and the time in the log, then replaced the creature back to his rotten meat kingdom in the evidence jar.

Grissom quietly said, "Good," but his voice was much deeper and coarser than normal. Sara grinned, shyly looking down, then picked up another jar to repeat the procedure. Grissom took in the smile he had just fantasized about, then slowly backed away, weaning himself from her, trying to avoid what he remembered to be the shock of sudden separation after commingling with her aura.

He had missed this - more than he realized. He knew he was playing with fire, but the heat drove back the barren coldness that had taken hold of his life. 'Just a little,' he promised himself. 'Just enough to feel alive again.'

* * * * *

"When they are fully matured, we sacrifice them and pin them on the board, to keep them," he told her, after she had finished measuring the immature insects.

"Sacrifice? As in, kill them?" she asked, a frown contorting her face.

"Yes," he answered. "When we've gotten all the information we can, and they are no longer useful, we kill them and preserve them as evidence."

"I know they're just bugs, but I'm a little uncomfortable with actually killing them, Grissom," she said, afraid he would be disappointed in her, or think her silly.

"I understand how you feel, Sara," he said gently. "But, they would die soon anyway, and we sacrifice them as humanely as possible," he assured her.

"How?" she asked uncertainly.

"There are many chemicals that can be used, but I prefer to put them in the freezer. The hypothermia puts them to sleep and then they die peacefully," he told her, trying to be empathetic to her concerns.

"That doesn't sound too bad," she agreed. "It's not like you have to watch them die. I don't think I could stand that," she said quietly.

Grissom took an evidence jar from the freezer and emptied the frozen fly out onto a block of styrofoam. He directed Sara to pick up a pin to fix the fly to the board, asking if she was comfortable with doing that. She said she was, and thanked him for asking.

She was unsure where or how she was supposed to spear the insect and looked around to Grissom for direction. He moved up behind her, slightly to her right and covered her hand with his, the contact momentarily paralyzing them both. He then picked up her hand and showed her how to find the right spot on the fly's thorax to pierce. He gently pushed her hand down, thrusting the pin through.

Though she was fully capable of pulling the impaled fly off the styrofoam and mounting it to the board by herself, he didn't release her hand. He continued to cradle it until the fly was secured to the board. When he lowered their hands, he finally released her. Still, he did not back away from her just yet, basking in her closeness as he fought to bring his breathing under control. He knew his face was flushed, and he was glad that she wasn't facing him, for a multitude of reasons.

She felt him finally pull away, like the tide receding from the shore, knowing it would build again, perhaps in a larger wave next time.

* * * * *

Sara and Grissom were on the promised field trip, walking along an alley, pulling up cardboard boxes and trash to find insects for her to practice with. Shift had been over for an hour, but neither was anxious to end the evening that had reminded them of better days.

"You want to get larvae, pupae and young adults to study. Ignore the grown ones, like these," he instructed, pointing out adult beetles.

They ambled down the deserted stretch populated only by dumpsters, bugs and rats.

"Sara, do people at the lab talk about me?" Grissom asked suddenly.

"Of course they do. You're our boss and our friend. It's natural to talk about you," she answered honestly.

"What do they say?" he asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

"It depends. They just talk about what's going on, or they talk about what they think you're like. You're so enigmatic that it makes people want to figure you out," she said with a smile.

"Why do they feel the need to figure me out?" he asked, curious.

"They're investigators, Grissom. They love mysteries. If you don't want people trying to figure you out, you should be less mysterious. No one tries to figure out Catherine. She's right out there for everyone to know." Sara laughed and spread her arms broadly to emphasize her words.

"So you're saying there's no way to maintain any privacy. If I try, people will gossip. If I am open, then everyone knows everything anyway."

"The trick, I'm finding out, is to be open about some things, so that no one suspects you're hiding other things," she whispered, conspiratorially.

"Ah! Misdirection," he nodded.

"Precisely," Sara answered. Pulling up a limp, moist box, Sara noticed a plethora of small, brown, rice-shaped objects. "Grissom, are these pupae or rat turds? It's so hard for me to tell the difference."

"Pupae," he answered perfunctorily, with one glance. "Rat turds aren't as shiny," he tutored her.

"Woo hoo! We hit the jackpot then," she said, picking up the small casings one at a time with plastic tweezers and putting them in a jar.

"Do you  talk about me?" he asked her, not knowing if he really wanted to hear the answer, but feeling compelled to ask.

"Yes, of course," she said easily, still at her task.

"What do you talk about?" he pressed.

"The same stuff everyone else does, Grissom," she said, feeling she needed to at least try to be honest with him. She knew she had to rebuild his trust in her, whether she'd deserved his mistrust or not.

"Did you tell anyone you asked me out for dinner?" he asked a bit nervously.

"No one at the lab. That would be just a little embarrassing, don't you think? Not because I asked you out necessarily. But because you turned me down so... so... well, anyway, no one here is the kind of friend I would share that with. Catherine would feel like she had to do something about it and I figured neither one of us wanted that. I'm friends with Nick, of course, but that's just not something you tell a guy friend. But I did tell a girlfriend of mine in San Francisco."

Grissom could feel the pain that she tried to hide with her casual words, knowing that he should have at least been more gentle in his initial rebuff of her invitation, but as usual it was too late to repair the damage by the time he realized he had caused it. But, he could tell by her painful admission and her last statement that she was being honest with him, and he felt his trust in her inch up.

"What if I had  gone to dinner with you? Would you have told your friends that?" he asked, cocking his head, daring her to answer just as openly.

"Hmm. I guess that would depend on what else happened. People at the lab go out to eat with each other all the time. I bet I've gone out with either Nick or Warrick a hundred times in the past three years. You've gone out alone with all of them, too. It's no big secret because it was no big deal."

"What if something else did  happen?" he ventured.

"The phone lines between Las Vegas and San Francisco would overload and erupt in flames," she laughed. "But I wouldn't tell anyone here, if that's what you're asking."

"I value my privacy. On principle, I'm not completely opposed to being open and sharing with specific individuals, but I wouldn't want them to feel that they could then just as openly share that knowledge with other inquiring minds," he felt he had to explain.

Standing up to face him, Sara decided to ask some questions of her own. "Is that why you never asked me out, Grissom? Why you turned me down when I asked you out? Because you don't trust me to honor your privacy?"

"Privacy is the reason I do a lot of the things I do, or don't do a lot of the things I don't do," he answered generically.

"What if I told you a secret? Something no one else knew. You could hold it hostage. If I ever told anything you consider private, you could tell my secret," she offered playfully, and yet seriously.

"I would never do such a thing!" Grissom bellowed indignantly.

"Well, neither would I," she countered much more calmly.

"You need to understand, Sara. It's not that I would be embarrassed or shamed in some way... How do I explain it?... The things I keep private are private because I want them to be mine alone. It keeps them special to me. When you first came here, you were my friend alone. But now you are friends with the others, too," he gave as an example.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" she asked, her brows knitted in puzzlement.

"Yes, it's what I wanted for you, but not necessarily what I wanted for me," he answered quixotically.

"Help me understand how all this affects our relationship, Grissom. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the attraction was one-sided. Maybe it would be easier for me to let it go and move on if I just understood why I have to," she said softly, an undercurrent of pleading to her voice.

He peered past her and thought for a long moment before speaking. She patiently waited, knowing he was searching for the words that she hoped could possibly free her, if not heal her.

"If I were to have dinner with you, as a date, then I would want that to be ours - nobody else's. If anyone knew, it would be theirs, too. It would make it less special for us."

He could tell that she still didn't quite understand, but he wasn't surprised.

He reached out his right hand and softly ran it down the side of her face. "If I were to touch you, like this, they couldn't possibly grasp the significance of it to me. Their very knowledge of it would reduce it somehow to just a touch, when in reality it would be so very much more."

Sara felt the skin on her face sear where his fingers grazed her. She involuntarily shuddered and drew in a gasp, but forced herself to stand still, willing herself to breath.

"And if I were to kiss you, like this," he said, drawing her to his lips for a few preliminary brushes, then a plunge into passion before separating, "putting it into words for anyone else would be like casting pearls before swine."

In the past, she had harshly accused him of being unfeeling, but now she found herself swept away by the sheer depth of his emotions. Never had a kiss conveyed so much in so little time. She saw what he had been hiding behind his veneer of dispassion: a sensitivity and a wellspring of emotion that so far exceeded what she had always thought of as romantic that she realized the English language had no adequate words for it.

"And if I were to make love with you, the way I've always wanted to..." he stopped, only gazing at her when further explanation became impossible.

"Now do you see why?" he asked gently. He studied her face for any doubts or confusion, and found none.

She no longer felt angry. She no longer felt hurt. The passions he allowed to wash over her had overwhelmed and washed away what now seemed like petty emotions. Whether they ever spoke of this again or not, for the first time she had been allowed a glimpse of how he really  felt.

She was aware that the knowledge didn't necessarily change things, but it did change her . She had never felt so special, so cherished. He had chosen her to be the only other person allowed to exist in his private universe - the others were as mere annoyances, like gnats. Whether he demonstrated that in the common universe was almost superfluous at the moment.

"I think I understand," Sara whispered, unable to gather enough breath for normal speech.

"Do you?" he asked, pulling her hand up to kiss her palm. "Do you really ?"

"I do," she confirmed with all the gravity she knew the question was due.

"In that case," he said, drawing in a deep breath, thinking a moment, then exhaling, "would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"

"I would be honored," she answered, giving his hand a gentle squeeze before letting it go. She smiled and returned to collecting the bugs she used to despise, the bugs that had brought them back together, closer than they had ever been before.

* * * * *

Author's Note: This is your last warning. Section two definitely resolves G/S tension.


"Is six too early to pick you up? I don't want us to be rushed since we are both on the schedule to work tonight," he asked, his voice beginning to return to normal.

"Six is fine," she answered. "How should I dress?"

"Like you would for work. That way we don't have change before work. I can just drop you back home to get your car and you can come right in," he said, obviously wanting to make sure not to waste any of the five hours they would have together.

"Sounds good," she said, rising up from kneeling. She showed him the jar full of pupae and smiled. "I still need some bugs that have already hatched, remember? To learn how to hold them without squishing them," she said, a disgusted look on her face.

"At first, you may think you are holding it too tight. Then when you loosen your grip, you accidentally lose your hold on it, perhaps damaging it even worse. Sometimes it's hard to learn how to hold onto something without hurting it," he allowed, searching her face to glean whether she knew what he was referring to.

"Or scaring it to half to death," she added, her own meaning clear to him.

"I'm sorry that I hurt you," Grissom whispered contritely.

"I'm sorry that I scared you," Sara countered softly.

This was not the time or place to explore their newfound openness any deeper than they already had. Their pent-up emotions were already threatening to break free from the walls that held them in check. Though the alleyway was remote, it could hardly be considered private enough.

They had years of practice ignoring, or pretending to ignore, the sexual tension between them, but this was different. This tension so far transcended the physical attraction that they found it almost impossible to resist its pull.

"We better get back," she said, finally breaking the silence. "We need to get some rest."

They gathered up her specimens into a paper bag to shield the creatures from the harsh Nevada sun, then started back down the alley towards the SUV. Though the trip was wordless, it wasn't silent, their bodies communicating throughout the walk. An incidental touch... a smile.

He opened the door and took her hand as she climbed up into the SUV's cab. He took the seatbelt and leaned across her to buckle it, the brief contact of their chests causing both of their hearts to momentarily stop, only to resume their beats with a more insistent pounding.

"Sara..." Grissom started, closing his eyes to think of the next words. "I don't know if I will be able to handle this." The courage he had found in the relative privacy of the alley was dissipating in the busy Las Vegas streets, brimming with cars and people.

'This' again. She wouldn't let him off so easily this time.

"Grissom, it will be okay. You'll see. It's just new and unfamiliar," she assured him.

He couldn't fathom how it could be unfamiliar, as many times as it has occupied his thoughts over the years.

"It's... it's too much - too intense," he choked out.

"It's too much now - too much here," she told him. "It won't seem that way in the right place, at the right time. Let's get back. You better let me drive," she said, smiling and taking the keys from his hand. She knew he needed the alone time for the next nine hours to decompress, but she also feared it would give him time to withdraw back into his private universe - without her again.

When they arrived back at the lab parking lot, Sara felt that she needed to reassure him that she was committed to honoring his privacy. She told him as she was opening the door, "Just get out, Grissom, and casually wave good-bye. Go directly to your car without looking back . Just like you would any other time, with anybody else. No one will think anything about it. I'll see you at six."

He looked at her thoughtfully, grateful that she was willing to accept his stipulations, and even more grateful that she evidently didn't take his moment of weakness a few minutes ago as another of his rejections.

They exited the SUV and she crossed over to head to the lab to deposit her specimens; he waved goodbye and she returned it casually, then he turned and walked to his car as she headed into the lab. The few people outside of the building took no notice, just as she had expected. Just another two CSIs returning from the field, as far as anyone was concerned.

* * * * *

Sleep was going to be difficult, she knew, but she certainly didn't want to have Grissom see her looking haggard, paler than usual, with darker-than-usual bags under her eyes. She made the bedroom as dark as she possibly could and laid down between the cool sheets. Any other time might have seemed lonely, but her thoughts were full of Grissom's closeness the past few days and his openness the past few hours. She smiled and drifted into a dream-filled slumber.

She awoke at four, wishing her body had allowed her one more hour of sleep, one less hour to wait. It wouldn't take her long to shower and dress for work; no matter how leisurely the shower, she would end up with at least an hour to wait for him to arrive - if he did, she warned herself.

She checked her phone messages on both the home phone and the cell phone, more than half expecting a message from Grissom telling her that he was backing out. Surely he would have the good grace to at least call her if he weren't going to show. Wouldn't he?

She decided to leave the worry until later, and climbed into the shower, allowing the warm fingers of water to beat the tension from her shoulders and back.

* * * * *

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and Grissom had not really slept. He had lain down, but the best he could do is drift in and out, semi-conscious. Snippets of scenes from the past few days would coalesce in his thoughts, then swirl back into the fog, only to be replaced by others. He would see her face, and the warmth would start building in his chest, but then the icy coldness of fear would attempt to steal the live-giving heat.

He wasn't afraid of the feelings as much as he was afraid of the intensity of the feelings. He thought he had been in love before, and maybe he had. But the feelings he had then were manageable. Losing those relationships had seemed difficult and disappointing at the time, but he never doubted that he would get over them.

He was paralyzed with fear when it came to Sara. He had been very affected the past year, just from trying to distance himself from her. And that was before he had begun the process today of letting her into his universe. If he let her all the way in, and she decided to leave, she would take everything with her, whether she meant to or not.

He chided himself for being melodramatic, but he really didn't think he could survive her leaving him - not if he really opened himself up to her. He knew that there was no more time. He had to make a final decision today. If he met her tonight, he knew all the walls would crumble and he would be risking everything. She could destroy him with a word. Or she could also bring him immeasurable joy.

But if he withdrew again, after letting her see that he cherished her, he knew she'd leave this time - for good. Even Sara had her limits. She had withstood his vacillations for years, but he knew that this one would be final. He had inadvertently raised the stakes today, for both of them.

'If I fold now, I lose less, but I can only lose. If I play out the hand I've been dealt, I could lose infinitely more, but I could win it all,' he told himself. 'If I'm going to risk that much, I might as well go all in,' he decided, his stomach doing a flop, but his mind calming once he made his decision.

He got up and began preparing for the evening that could easily determine the rest of his life. The pressure was palpable, but he busied himself, fighting to keep his mind concentrated on each task instead of trying to foretell the future.

* * * * *

She looked into her closet, trying to find that balance between work and date, but could not. Sara exhaled and shook her head at her foolishness. She knew that Grissom could not care less what she wore. He had only noticed what she had on one time in all the years she had known him, the day she testified at the Haviland trial.

She realized now that she had totally misread him that day. Uncharacteristically paying her a compliment about how she looked, then telling her in effect that it was okay for her to be seeing Hank was his way of giving her a choice between the two men. Instead, she became angry that he didn't press his claim on her and stormed off, leaving Grissom to assume the choice was made.

Putting the memory out of her mind, she pulled on one of her three pairs of black slacks, a tank top and a sweater - nothing he had not seen her in dozens of times. She put on a little makeup, but no more than she had been wearing lately. She was as ready as she would ever be, and it was only 5:05 p.m.

She sat down on the couch and began flipping through the channels on the TV, attempting to find something to occupy her time. The phone rang at 5:18 and she picked it up on the first ring, "Sidle."

"Um, Sara?" Grissom asked, though she had answered with her name.

Her stomach began to knot, expecting the worst. "Yes, Grissom?"

"If you're ready, could I come pick you up now?" he asked.

She inwardly laughed at herself, and realized that he had probably also been ready for a while, and didn't want to kill time for the sake of ceremony. "Sure. I'm ready now. I'll see you in ten."

At 5:30, her doorbell rang, but it wasn't necessary because she was already standing at the door. She had been watching out of her window and had seen him arrive.

She swung the door open and smiled, silently thanking him for not bailing on her as she had more than half expected.

He could see her relief, and the words came out of his mouth at the same time as they flitted into his mind, "You didn't think I'd go through with it, did you?"

"Let's just say I considered that possibility," she rejoined.

"To be honest, so did I," he admitted, then suddenly realized that confession might hurt her feelings.

Instead, she laughed and took his arm. "Let's go eat. It's bound to only get easier from here."

When they got into his car, she asked, "Where are we going?"

"To the lake," he answered, nodding towards the backseat, where Sara could see an ice chest.

"A picnic? Sweet! I haven't been on a picnic in years!" she squealed.

Grissom was glad that she wasn't disappointed that he wasn't taking her out to a restaurant. He wasn't anywhere near being ready to share her yet, even with just a room full of disinterested strangers.

It was still light when they arrived at the lake - hot in the sun, but cooler in the shade. Sara took off her sweater and was comfortable in her tank top. Grissom took off his ubiquitous jacket, to Sara's amusement.

"So you do have arms under that jacket. Hmm. Nice arms, at that," she purred, but kept her distance.

"Now you see why I always wear a jacket. I wouldn't want to distract all the ladies at work," he teased.

"Good plan," she agreed, as she spread out the blanket for them to sit on. Grissom fetched the cooler, set it in the middle and began to unpack sandwiches, fruit, and cheese.

"Who all is coming to this party?" Sara asked, surveying the feast he was laying out.

"I wasn't sure what you would want to eat, so I brought an assortment. What we don't eat will keep," he assured her.

"What kind of sandwiches did you bring?" she asked, purposefully sitting on the opposite edge of the blanket from Grissom. Just in case they happen to be seen, they were a very discreet distance from each other. Just two people talking, by all appearances.

"Three kinds: egg salad, cucumber, and peanut butter. Take your pick," he replied.

"You remembered!"

"Of course I remembered. Just because you didn't happen to eat meat at the meals we shared didn't necessarily mean you were a vegetarian. I couldn't know for sure. Considering you almost left me over it the day you told me, I could hardly forget, could I?"

"I'm sorry, Grissom. I totally overreacted. It wasn't really about the meat, though," she admitted, unwrapping a cucumber sandwich.

"What was it about, if you don't mind telling me?" he asked, curious to have that mystery solved after almost two years.

"It's kind of embarrassing to talk about, to be honest. That day I was being kind of... I kept, um... I was..."

"Hanging all over me? Yeah, I noticed," he laughed. "Kind of hard not to, especially the time you had your, um, chest, against my arm."

Sara covered her face with her hands and squealed her embarrassment. "I was mad because I thought you didn't  notice. Good thing I didn't know that you did  notice and just ignored me. That would have really  pissed me off!"

"Sara, we were at work. In the lab. People all over the place. What did you expect me to do? I had to get out of there before things got out of hand," he explained.

"I was trying so hard to get you to see me as a woman instead of as a CSI."

"That was never a problem, Sara. Well, actually it was, but the other direction. I had to fight to remember you are a CSI. And an employee that I supervise. It was, and is, all too easy to see you as a woman."

"Thank you, Grissom. That's sweet," she acknowledged. "So was the plant, but I have to say the sentiment on the card was a little lacking in creativity," she teased him.

"I kept thinking of all the things I wanted to say, but they all seemed so trite. Not to mention the fact that Catherine was listening to every word I said."

"Catherine was there?" Sara asked, with a tinge of jealousy.

"Yeah, she came over to read me the riot act about you quitting. She drank a little too much and really reamed me a new one about my lack of people skills."

"Was the plant her idea?" Sara asked, dreading the disappointment she knew would come if it was.

"No. It was my idea. She just said I had to 'deal with it before it's gone'. I assumed that the 'it' she was referring to was you. As I said, she was tipsy."

Sara was relieved that Catherine had not specifically told him to send the plant. But she should have known. If it had been Catherine's idea, she no doubt would have given him some better ideas of what to put on the card.

Grissom looked at Sara as she absorbed his story, and he cocked his head over to the side. "Are you jealous of Catherine?"

"A little," Sara answered honestly. "She's beautiful, sexy, more mature than I am, more experienced at work. You work almost exclusively with her now. I think we are all starting to wonder what's up with that."

"What's up is that I was having a hard time dealing with a lot of things. Catherine is my best friend, but she's no pushover. She was safe to be around, yet kept me in line, as much as possible. But, if it bothers you, I can..."

"No, you shouldn't change anything now," she warned. "Keep doing what you've been doing at work. You might want to work with the boys every so often, just to be fair to them, but you have to continue to avoid me. I will continue to act like you're just being a jerk."

"Does that mean you're still going to be flirting with all the guys there?" he asked.

"No more and no less than usual. The guys and I have been flirting for three years. We all know it's just a game. No one takes it seriously," she assured him.

"This is going to be complicated," Grissom complained.

"No, it doesn't have to be. All you have to keep in mind is that we live in one universe from eleven at night until seven in the morning - theirs. From seven to eleven, it's our universe. In theirs, nothing has changed, so why would we act any differently from how we've been acting?"

"If you can pull that off, you have an amazing capacity for detachment and compartmentalization," he said.

"I learned at the feet of the master," she grinned, bowing towards him.

The sun was finally beginning to set and Sara pulled on her sweater. "Come here," Grissom suggested, grabbing his jacket.

She crawled across the blanket in the deepening darkness to sit next to him. Instead, he pulled her around in front of him, draping his jacket over her shoulders, fitting her back to his chest and wrapping his arms around her to warm her.

In the dusk, they would be unrecognizable, and soon it would be completely dark. Grissom's only regret is that they would only have an hour or so where they could be close before they had to pack up and leave.

Sara leaned her head back onto his shoulder and let out a contented purr, bringing a smile to Grissom's lips. It felt good to be able to make her happy for a change, even if he still felt the fear in the pit of his stomach.

He could barely see her, but he could just make out the lines of her neck stretched out next to him, and it beckoned to him. He resisted, but it called him all the sweeter. He told himself 'no', but her neck told him 'yes'. He could not win this argument with Sara, even when she didn't speak. Even when she didn't know they were arguing.

He fought himself every millimeter of the ever-shortening distance between his lips and her neck. Once he was there, he conceded defeat and began to taste her, bringing a low moan from her. He promised himself that he would content himself with this alone for tonight. He wanted to savor their time of exploration, drawing it out, heightening the anticipation from one level to the next. This little bit he could control, he was sure.

It became apparent that he had left one variable out of his calculations, and it was a glaring mistake: Sara. She turned her head and began kissing him on the cheek, then moved down to the sensitive area of his neck just below his ear. He began to lose his equilibrium quickly. His resolve was crumbling faster than he could repair it. If their lips ever touched, he knew he could not control where it went from there.

As if reading his mind, she began to work her way back up his neck to his face, moving perilously close to his lips. "Sara..." he just managed to say as she covered his lips with her own. He could feel all rational thought shutting down quickly, and he jerked his head back, startling her.

"Sara, you've got to stop," he gasped out.

She kissed him again and he responded by licking the inside edges of her lips, only to suddenly pull back again. "Sara, please stop. If you don't, I won't be able to."

She took his lower lip into hers, gently sucking on it before returning to his open mouth, their tongues finding each other and dancing like lovers.

"I won't be able to stop," he groaned into her mouth.

She turned her body around to face him, crawling up to straddle his legs, her hands in his hair and her mouth devouring his. She pressed herself closer into him, needing to feel him over as much of her body as possible.

Though his lips didn't leave hers, he pushed her back a little so that she was more on his legs and less on his lap. She strained to move back up, but his hands held her in place. "Gris-som," she complained.

"I told you to stop," he said. "Now it might be too late," he warned.

"Are you trying to hide this?" she asked, running her hand down his chest to his lap, landing across his arousal.

"Don't," he begged.

"Don't you want me?" she asked.

"I think that's self-evident," he retorted in frustration. "But not like this. I don't want it to be like this."

"What do  you want?" she asked seductively, still fondling him and nuzzling his neck.

"I want our first time to make love to be special. I don't want us to have to rush."

"Okay, then let's not make love tonight," she answered, to both his relief and his disappointment. She surprised him with, "Let's have sex instead." She pushed his hands away and moved back up to his lap, slowly grinding herself into him as they kissed.

"Sara..." he tried to interject between kisses.

"No, Grissom. You told me once that you didn't know what to do about 'this'. Well, I do. We need 'this' - both of us. We need to get 'this' out of our systems." She stood up and slipped off her pants and underwear, but Grissom was unaware what she was doing in the pitch dark, fearing she had walked off from him. When she eased herself back down to him, she was scooted back. He was startled when she began to unzip his pants.

"Sara... This is your last chance to stop this before it goes too far," he warned, his voice almost unrecognizably husky.

Without a word she freed his tumescence from all of its encumbrances, and he groaned when he felt her grasp him again, this time skin to skin. The angle of her hand changed and he realized she was no longer sitting on his legs, though his mind was so addled at that point that he could not swear to anything. Suddenly, he knew what she was doing, as she guided him to her opening.

He involuntarily bucked into her and she lowered herself on him, slowly.

He wanted to tell her how good she felt, how hot, how tight, but it all sounded so pornographic to him, so vulgar. He wasn't sure he could form coherent words anyway.

It took her a few moments to be able to take him all in, but then she began to tease him, pulling him all the way out, only to spear herself on him again when he instinctively whimpered at her disengagement.

Within minutes he could no longer stand to be a static participant, and he rolled them over. Hovering over her for a moment before they resumed, he stroked the side of her face tenderly, straining to see her eyes in the pale moonlight. "Sara... I lo..."

"Don't say it, Grissom," she warned. "Don't say it unless you mean it." Then she silenced him with impassioned kisses.

He began to move, thrusting more deeply than Sara thought she could contain. Soon she could tell by the twitching muscles all over his body that he couldn't hold on much longer, but she wasn't worried. She could feel her climax steadily building. She buried her face into his neck, panting.

Grissom knew she was close, and just as he felt the muscles in her body begin to tighten, he breathed in her ear, "I love you," and he felt her go over the edge, screaming his name and begging him not to stop, as if it were possible for him to. If anything, her screams made him even harder, and being able to make her react this way made him feel powerful, more virile than he had ever felt.

She reached one arm around him and slid it down to his rear, pulling him in deeper with each thrust, her orgasm still washing over her, driving him wild. Just as he began to feel the unfamiliar tingle in his testicles, she slid up to his ear, first sucking the lobe between her lips, then as he bucked to begin his ejaculation, she told him, "I love you, too," sending him into the abyss in waves. He moved in her several more times, surprised at how many times it took to finish emptying into her.

He rolled them over, her lying on top of him, them still connected at the groin. He would have been content to lie with her like that forever, but it was time to return to the 11 to 7 universe.

Seeming to read his mind again, Sara lifted herself up and kissed him lightly before pushing herself off of him in search of her underwear and pants. As she located them she could hear the zip of Grissom's pants. "Did you by any chance bring some napkins?" she asked.

"Yeah, there here somewhere," he answered, looking around in the scant moonlight, finally finding them by the cooler.

"You know what they say, nothing's ever finished until the paperwork's done," she quipped, as she cleaned herself up the best she could with only a handful of paper napkins.

"We don't have time to go home first, Sara," Grissom worried.

"No problem. If anyone sees us, I'll just say I had car trouble and asked you to pick me up."

"Remembering that we don't get along in their universe, why would you ask me instead of Nick or Warrick?" he challenged her.

"Just to piss you off," she answered.

"I've often suspected as much." He laughed and brought her to him for a hug, kissing the top of her head. "I'll miss you the next few hours, Sara. Can I see you again, after work?"

"Of course," she answered, lightly brushing his lips with her own.

Putting the ice chest and blanket in the trunk of his car, he walked her over to her door and helped her in. As he got in on the driver's side, she asked, "Do you want to have a fight tonight at work, or do you just want to ignore me? Dealer's choice."

"I'm too tired to fight, so how about if I send you out solo? That always pisses you off."

"Yeah, but then I can't complain about you to anyone," she demurred.

"Let's just play it by ear," he suggested, leaning over for one last kiss before returning to the common universe for another night.

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