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~*~
She was glad to be cold, at least, and not dying of heat exhaustion. Perks of the night shift. Although it was winter, so daytime really would have been better.
She tried not to shiver visibly as Grissom walked slowly back over to her, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, his ball cap slightly lopsided on his head. “I radioed our approximate location. The last street that I recognized anyway.”
It wasn’t much to go on. They’d been following a hunch, and, being the two most work-obsessed and least practical members of the CSI Las Vegas graveyard shift, ended up at least an hour out on an unmarked dirt road in the desert in the middle of the night. Which was fine until they found the battery on the Denali dead.
Grissom is irritatingly handsome in the liquid starlight of the open desert. He chews at his lip as he gazes out upon the sprawling landscape. “Do you need my jacket?” he asks, his eyes skittering over her shoulders where she’s hunched into her thin cotton shirt.
“I’m okay,” she lies, trying to stiffen her jaw against chatters.
Her boss sighs. He looks a little miserable, stranded out here in the desert with her. Things haven't been easy lately. She knows she’s been cold to him, but he had rejected her and spoken down to her and now, she is fairly sure, openly favored Nick over her. She thought he had her back but she’d been wrong.
“Want to wait in the car?”
Sara blows out a breath, shivering, and turns her back to him. “You can,” she replies neutrally.
She hears him step up behind her. “I’ll stick with you.”
Will you , she thinks. Now that’s a change. “It’s fine, Grissom. I won’t wander off and die somewhere if you leave me alone for five minutes.”
She doesn’t mean to look at him, but he moves his head a little and it catches her eye in the low light. She sees what she didn’t want to see - his brows pinched together, his mouth pursed. A look of obvious hurt on his face. He makes no answer.
Sara closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to be this way with him - sarcastic and cruel. She cares for him, respects him immensely. She wants to be friends with him. She wants to forgive him for not loving her the way she needed him too.
She wishes she were a better person than she is.
“I’m sorry,” she says at length, her voice hardly audible against the cold dry desert wind.
He rolls his shoulder uncomfortably, and tilts his face up towards the expanse of ink black sky above. Her eyes move involuntarily along the bend of his throat, his adam’s apple, the angle of his jaw. “That’s Orion’s Belt,” he says, pulling one hand free from his jacket to point.
Sara follows his line of regard.
“The Book of Songs is the oldest Chinese book of poetry. In it they talk about Orion’s belt, called Shen, and Antares, called Sheng, which is another star. Orion always sets before Antares rises, and vice versa, so the Book considers them an analogy for two people who remained forever connected to one another but could never unite.”
Sara mulls over this little piece of Grissom trivia, trying not to read into it too much and mostly failing. “That’s depressing,” she says flatly.
Grissom dips his chin down towards his chest and exhales a long, quiet breath. “I would call it tragic.”
Possessed by some alien impulse to make nice - or maybe just create a little heat in this cold desert night - Sara steps sideways until her shoulder is pressed to Grissom’s shoulder. He stiffens for a moment before forcibly relaxing. “Let’s find somewhere to sit,” he suggests.
“Okay,” she says. She doesn’t want to sit - her body is itching with anxious discomfort at being trapped here with Grissom - but she feels like she needs to give him something.
He finds a rock that is suitable for them to pull up onto, with another boulder behind it to lean against. The smooth stone is cold through her clothes. They sit in silence for a few minutes, and then discuss cases in bits and pieces, but the conversation feels stilted and awkward. Grissom keeps one eye towards the road, waiting for headlights.
The silence stretches until it is a thick, syrupy thing, making it hard for Sara to breath. She is entranced by the yawning quiet of the desert, by the blackness of the night and the glitter of the stars, but the man next to her is making the silence something electric and unwanted. She is trying to dream up something to say that will break this painful stalemate when he softly clears his throat.
“Sara,” he says, sounding like he’s choosing his words delicately so as not to set her off, “You’re shivering.”
No shit, Sherlock. It’s 40 degrees out here and I don’t have warm clothes. “I’m cold.”
He unzips his jacket. “Take my jacket,” he says. “Please.”
Sara presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Easy, Sidle. Easy. “Then you’ll be cold.”
She can’t see his face in the darkness, but he turns it towards her. “Then we can share.”
“What?”
He sighs roughly. “It’s too cold for this, Sara. We have to survive. Office politics take a backseat.”
Office politics. Sara tangles her fingers together. “I don’t know, Gris, snuggling up to a heartless robot probably won’t do much to warm me up.”
She can practically hear the whistle of the arrow as she lets the words fly and she sees them land in the way he withers back from her. It isn’t what she wants but it is it’s own triumph.
Another twenty minutes pass in painful silence before she feels him shift and finds him pulling open his jacket and wrapping himself around her, apparently past the point of negotiation. “I don’t want you to freeze,” he whispers - he’s so close there’s no need to speak in full volume.
Sara feels the heat of his body radiating like nuclear fission, almost scalding. He smells good - not cologne, just him, a masculine salty skin smell that has her taking deep breaths in before she’s even aware of it. His side is against her, his shoulder behind her shoulder as he tucks her into his body.
She feels how tense he is, how uncomfortable, and it’s heartbreaking that this is how it finally happens for them - physical intimacy out of desperate necessity, when their hearts couldn’t be farther apart. She feels his breath curling hot against her neck.
Sara leans her head into the side of his neck. He winces, probably because her skin is so cold. His arm comes around her and starts to rub at her arm. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“For what?” she mumbles into the warm skin of his neck. She feels his body tense again at the contact.
“For everything.”
Sara doesn’t know what to make of this so she says nothing. They sit folded together like a pair of socks for some interminable time, Grissom relaxing by degrees, until he shifts again so that she’s more or less on his lap, and she’s not sure that it’s strictly necessary for heat preservation but she can’t think of a way to ask that isn’t far more unkind than she intends it to be.
“Do you remember when we went to that fungus fair in Santa Cruz?”
It sort of makes sense, why he’d think of that - they’d come down from San Francisco for the day, driven up to the redwoods afterwards in Henry Cowell State Park, and they’d found a spot where they could see the stars, wandering through the towering trees for hours. “Yeah,” Sara answers, “we had sex on a picnic table in the park.”
If Grissom was stiff before, he went rigid now, and even pressed this close Sara can’t feel him breathing. She feels almost sorry for him. “Right,” he says.
It had been their last date before he’d flown back to Vegas - she’d invited him to the fungus fair in the little hippy university town an hour south of San Francisco, and he’d teased her for not paying for dinner after asking him out, and he’d kissed her against a two hundred year old redwood like she was finest wine he’d tasted in his life. “It was a fun day,” Sara offers, hoping to smooth things over.
Grissom says nothing beside her. She isn’t surprised - they never speak of San Francisco; it is one of those unspoken taboos that was set immediately upon her arrival in Las Vegas. It was a major breach for him to bring it up at all, and she’d surely reminded him why it was far too dangerous a topic to be discussed.
Sara tilts her head back so she can look skyward again. She feels oddly calm. He’s still holding her securely, and maybe it’s the safety and warmth of his touch or the darkness or just that she doesn’t care anymore, but she says, “Do you ever miss it? What we had before.”
He is quiet for so long she figures he won’t answer at all, but then she feels him breath against the crown of her head. “No,” he says. It shouldn’t hurt. It does. Sara sits up, needing to be away, but he is stronger than her - she forgets that, sometimes; he is such a gentle man - and pulls her back against his chest. “I didn’t know you back then, Sara. Not really. We were just having fun, like you said. It wouldn’t be like that now. It wouldn’t be… casual.”
“What wouldn’t be?”
She feels him shifting his jaw nervously above her. She turns a little and winds one arm around his middle to give him a supportive squeeze. “If we were... together. It wouldn’t be casual. And when it ended at least one of us would be heartbroken.”
“And if it didn’t end?”
He drops his head back and it thunks softly against the rock behind them. “I don’t know. Then we’d have a life, I guess.”
Sara stares into the dark space between his neck and shoulder for several minutes. She can’t see anything there, and that’s a good thing; she is too busy trying to pull apart his words. “So what do we do instead? Quietly burn each other down with this cold hatred?”
He pulls away from her, a quick, involuntary motion before deliberately stilling himself. “Hatred?” he echoes softly.
Sara inwardly curses and leans into him a little more. “I didn’t mean…”
He draws in an uneven breath. “I could never hate you, Sara,” he says, desperately serious.
Sara sits up abruptly, rubbing at her eyes. God. This is such a fucking mess. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, and she can’t be sure but she thinks he is almost close to tears. “Grissom…”
“It’s okay,” he cuts across her, not moving to pull her close again. She is glad it is too dark to see his face. “I know. Things have been tense between us. I know I’ve been… a disappointment to you.”
“Not you ,” Sara corrects. “Only the choices you’ve made.”
“I know,” he says again.
The tears come: sudden and unwelcome but blessedly warm. Sara rubs at her eyes and tries to master her breathing. She feels his hands circling her wrists, pulling her hands from her face. “I’m cold,” she says, half a sob.
“Oh honey,” he breathes, holding her face in his hands. She feels his thumbs moving slowly against her cheeks. “Sara, I’m sorry.”
Sara gets herself under control, looking fixedly out into the silhouetted desert, not looking at all at the man just next to her who she’s loved for five or six or seven years. His palm is still cupping her face and she draws it gently down, holding his hand like it is some fascinating piece of evidence. “You know,” she says quietly, “you’re the only man I’ve loved who I’ve never been afraid of.”
He is silent. She sees his fingers curl slightly, and she touches them, thinking about how this hand has been on her and alongside her and even inside her, and it has never hurt her, and it never will.
“I never had boyfriends who beat me. Or, well, only one. But they all scared me, in their own way. Screaming. Punching walls. Saying horrible things. I was angry too, I still am. I get rough sometimes. I never hit people but sometimes I want to. It never occured to me people could be different until I met you. I never thought a man could care about me without scaring me, without being vicious at least sometimes. Without lying to me, shaming me, betraying me. I thought that was just how things worked. But not you.” Sara looks up, and the starlight catches strangely on Grissom’s pale eyes as he stares at her. “I trust you completely,” she says, and it is a wonder even as she says it. “Even with all this… weirdness between us. I’ve never trusted anyone as much as I trust you.”
He moves slowly, and she tries to keep him in focus until he is too close. He leans his forehead against hers. Their breath is warm in the frigid desert air, see-sawing back and forth between their mouths.
It’s her that closes that final distance, as it’s always been with them two, but he seals his lips against hers like he welcomes the intrusion, and then he’s kissing her, his tongue raking against her lower teeth, pressing into her mouth, his lips moving on her lips, easing back every few seconds to give her breath and time for her liquified brain to catch up, biting softly at her lower lip, biting softly at her jaw, and jesus fucking christ why would such a monkish man be this good at kissing?
“You taste so fucking good,” she says, sounding hoarse and ravaged. She can’t really tell if he’s going to be one for dirty talk, but he doesn’t seem to object and then his tongue is in her mouth again and she’s not talking at all for a while, her fingers sliding up into his hair, nails scraping lightly against his scalp. He moans, his voice pitched so low it’s more vibration than sound.
Sara shifts to throw one leg over his legs, straddling him, their mouths licking and sucking and biting together, her hands smoothing over his shoulders and down his chest and then one finger sliding under his belt down the front of his trousers, his abdominal muscles tensing against her knuckles.
He’s gripping her waist with one hand, the other hand tangled in her hair, not pulling - he would never be that rough - but just exerting a light pressure that sends electrical pulses from her head straight to her clit. Fuck, she’s wet.
She breaks off from his mouth to kiss and bite at his jaw and his pulse point, and she rolls her hips forward to fit tightly to his, grinding down reflexively on the hard ridge of his erection beneath the layers of his clothes. She hears him expel a shuddering breath, his hand squeezing at her waist as she licks a strip from the hollow of his throat up to his ear. “God, I want you,” she pants, her hands in his hair again, “I want you to fuck me.”
“Jesus,” he says, a breath beneath a breath, the only word he’s spoken since they started furiously making out on this desert rock. He moves unexpectedly, and again she’s surprised that he’s strong enough to lift her and rotate her onto her back against the boulder.
It’s fucking cold but she can’t care as she pulls off her shirt, the desert wind rushing across her naked skin like a liquid touch. She forgot how exotic it feels to be naked outside, how deliciously sensual. Grissom’s hands are blazingly warm where he smooths them down between her breasts, across her stomach, over her ribs.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, more to himself than to her, and in the darkness she can only see his eyes moving hungrily over her. She feels one hand under her back resting against the clip of her bra. “May I?”
Always the gentlemen. She grins at him, feeling a fierce swell of love. “Please.” He pulls her bra off without any difficulty - not a monk after all - and then his hands are circling her breasts, closer and closer, not quite touching her nipples. When he finally bends his head to kiss her nipple she arches up like she’s been electrocuted, and it’s been way too long, she could almost fucking cum from his tongue against her nipple. “Christ,” she says.
He lathes his tongue over the other breast, his hands still roaming up and down her torso, his fingers tracing her waistband. Sara takes the hint and pulls open the button of her jeans. He leans back to strip off her pants, then he just sits there on his knees between her legs, smoothing his hands over her thighs and calves. She can’t see his expression in the dark and she wishes - for the first time that night - that she could.
He kisses her knee, and then his arm is bracing beside her hip and he lowers his head, kissing her stomach, the hard jut of her hip. “Sara,” he says into her belly button, his hot breath curling against her skin, “I want to eat you out.”
She flexes her hips up automatically, her hands balling into fists. “Okay,” she says.
He pulls off her panties and takes his time - always taking his fucking time, Gil Grissom - nipping at her thighs and stomach and moving closer and closer to her vulva. He finally is there and he’s slow, then, too, licking and kissing, never quite touching her clit and not because he doesn’t know where it is. His fingers are there, too, pressing into her vagina, one and then two and then curling, and god , she feels the muscles down there quivering with the beginnings of an orgasm; he must feel it too because he stills his fingers and then slowly licks at her clit with a featherlight pressure.
He must realize before long there’s no use in drawing this out - she’s gonna fucking cum - because he curls his fingers up and thrusts them in and out and flattens his tongue against her clit and fuck she is gone, squeezing rhythmically on his fingers, the tight pulsing pleasure of it like a knot of honey in her stomach that rolls out through her body into her fingertips. She curls up over his head with the exquisite sensation of it, breathless, soundless. He works her through until she is sprawled against the freezing boulder, starting to shiver.
He waits while she catches her breath, kissing softly at her hip, not pushing or presuming. She brings him up with a light pull at his curly hair and then devours his mouth again, not as greedily this time but just as wantonly, and delights in his growl of longing as she rolls her hips up against his erection once, twice, until a fraction of that famous restraint cracks and he thrusts against her. She spreads her legs for him, and it’s like he’s fucking her but he’s still completely clothed against her naked body, and she knows she’s getting his pants wet, smearing herself all over the crotch of his slacks where he’s grinding his cock against her as he kisses her like his life depends on it.
“Off,” she says finally, tugging at his waistband. He leans back and unbuckles and pulls them down only enough that she can see his erection deforming the shape of his boxer briefs, and then those are down too and she doesn’t get to see his naked penis because he’s over her again, the head pressing against her vagina and then pulling back.
He is looking down at her. She can feel his panting breaths against her cheek. “Are you…?”
She wraps an arm around his shoulder and pulls him down. “Fuck me, Gris,” she commands.
He obeys, sliding in in one easy movement, and it hurts a little because it’s been a while but mostly fuck. She arches her hips to get the angle right and then he’s bottoming out and she hears him grinding a moan against her neck like he’s in physical pain, and he’s heavy over her, his arms braced to keep most his weight off, his body heat glowing deliciously from him, his hips pressing her hard into the rock with each thrust, and the slide of his cock in and out of her feels so fucking good, and his weight, that aching delicious spot he keeps hitting with the bottom of each push forward, and all of it is like biting into chocolate after two weeks of salads. She won’t come again, not from this, but it is it’s own kind of intense satisfaction, satiating a desperate hunger.
Only a couple minutes later and his thrusts are getting harder and she can tell from his harsh, whining breaths that he’s about to cum; she draws him closer, biting at his neck and pressing her hips up into his thrusts until he presses once, twice more and then grinds his hips down and moans and she can feel his cock pulsing inside her as he orgasms.
They drift together in that space for a moment, his face in her neck, her arms rubbing up and down his back. He’s still got all his clothes on. He leans back finally and pulls off his jacket and nudges her upright to wrap her in it. Sara shifts her legs so they’re sitting side by side again, reaches down to pull her pants back on before she freezes solid.
When she’s clothed he pulls her up onto his lap, spreading his legs to make room for her, holding her like a child. She burrows into him, warm and wonderful.
They are quiet for a long, long while. Now, the desert seems a beautiful place: desolate and starkly perfect, so still, so peaceful and savage. The only motion in the world is Grissom’s slowing breaths at her back, his slow hand rubbing up and down her arm.
“What now?” she says, her voice hoarse and muttered into the smooth fabric of his jacket.
He shifts a little beneath her, leans his chin on her head. “I’ve… been making the same choice for fifty years, Sara.” Sara doesn’t know what this means, so she waits, safe in the warmth of him all around her. “The choice to be alone. To make my work my life. Change is hard. It’s… frightening. They say ‘fall in love’... I feel like I’m… I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff by my fingertips. And you’re prying my fingers loose one by one.”
“Not anymore,” Sara corrects softly.
A pause. “No,” Grissom agrees. “No, it’s my choice now; I want to let go. But it’s terrifying to fall and not see the bottom.”
“It is terrifying,” Sara says. “Sometimes with you I’m not sure there is a bottom.” He says nothing. “But this here… you and me on this rock: this isn’t frightening.”
She feels his smile against her skin as he ducks his head against her jaw. “No, this is… sublime.”
She turns to kiss his mouth lightly. “Do you love me?”
He breaths against her lips. “Yes, Sara. Since the beginning. Maybe more than anything else in my life.”
Sara gives him a sad, understanding look. She can see the outline of his hair sticking up at all angles, his soft eyes glowing in the night. “That is scary.”
“Yes.”
The yellowish blaze of headlights startles them both; they pull apart, and Sara hastens to pull her shirt on before Brass can turn in and illuminate them in their hiding place. Grissom walks with her to the car, a ghost of warmth at her back.
~*~