Disclaimer: I do not own Grissom, Sara, Brass or anyone else in connection with CSI, I just play with them.
AN: Thanks to Rhee for beta reading! I was forced to write this, more or less, since I lost a bet that I was 150 percent sure I would win.
Pairing: GSR
Genre: Angst
Warning: SPOILERS FOR LEAVING LAS VEGAS!!!!!! Big time!
Summary: ...Spoiler free?? Then don't read any further!!
Sara finds out about Grissom's plans and confronts him - more or less
Leaving Las Vegas
The sound of a folder being thrown onto his desk made him look up from his book, his eyes wandered up over her body until they reached her face. Judging from her expression he was fortunate the folder hadn’t been thrown right into his face. He swallowed hard. She was standing; she didn’t even consider taking a seat; that meant she was angry, really angry. And she wasn’t just angry; she did her best to hold back her tears. She knew it. He didn’t know who had told her but someone had…
“I closed the case.” She said after a moment, staring down at the folder.
For a second he hoped she might take a deep breath and would give him one of those little smiles that he loved so much. It would never happen but he’d remain optimistic until he’d been proven wrong, which, to his misfortune, happened pretty quickly.
“Oh,” She started again. “And I’d like to have my key back.”
It felt as if his heart had stopped beating. It pretty much felt like someone had pushed the ‘pause’ button and only him and Sara were still on ‘play’. A pain that he couldn’t really define grew up in his chest and traveled through his body, he tried to swallow it but he couldn’t. He felt how he started to shake and tried to suppress it but didn’t succeed.
And she just continued staring down at the folder, as if she knew that if she had to look at him she’d take it back again. God he prayed that she would take it back. He had made a mistake, yes. A big mistake and he would admit that, he’d do anything if it would change her mind.
“Sara,” He tried but she cut him off.
“When did you plan on telling me?” She raised an eyebrow and finally looked at him, crossing her arms over her chest as if to shield herself from him.
“I, I wanted to… I would have told you. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.” He didn’t know the exact answer to her question though; he had pushed away the thought of telling her about his plan to leave whenever it had occurred to him.
“You would have told me? Gil, you are leaving Vegas in four hours, when did you plan on telling me?” She shook her head. “Or did you plan to simply leave me a post-it on the breakfast table? So that when I come home with the grocery bags in my arms and enter the kitchen it would be the first thing I’d see?”
She wasn’t just mad or angry, she was hurt and he had promised her to never, never ever hurt her again, he had sworn it. She had all the right in the world to be mad like hell and in this very moment she made use of it.
“And what would you have written on there? Something like ‘Hey Honey, I’ll be back in six weeks, bye Grissom’? Or,” She made a short pause. “Or, something that would be more typical for you, something like ‘Will not be here for six weeks; G; period.’… Yeah, I bet that is the note I am going to find when I go home,” She swallowed hard and corrected herself. “When I go to your place, to get all my stuff from there.”
“Sara, I,” She cut him off again.
“You had enough time on your hands to talk about certain things with me; you didn’t and now you just have to accept the consequences.” She told him, her voice getting angrier. “I will leave your key on the breakfast table, next to the post-it.” She turned around and was about to leave when he found his voice back in full strength.
“Damn it Sara, at least give me a chance to explain it!” He didn’t even notice that he had left his seat and was now standing nor had he noticed he had been screaming until the two day shift CSIs in the hallway gave him a weird look. He swallowed his frustration in order to calm down. “Please, let me explain. I know I don’t deserve it but give me the chance to explain it to you.”
“Well I shouldn’t leave without my key anyway.” She said and walked back over to his desk.
“Take a seat.” He pleaded.
“No, you have five minutes to explain this to me and then I want my key back, then I will do my best to swallow the urge to scratch off every inch of the varnish from your car with it on my way to the parking lot and then I will… then I will leave all this shit behind me and start forgetting you and I will,” This time he was the one to cut her off.
“Five minutes, I won’t need more.” He took a deep breath. “I am an asshole. I am not going to deny that, but I really didn’t mean to hurt you. I, I was asked if I’d like to teach this seminar at Williams College and I really wanted to, but there was the case with the serial killer and there was you and… and on the other hand I… I felt I was burning out and when our serial killer killed himself in front of my eyes I knew that I needed to get away. So this was the best chance to do it.”
At least from her expression he could tell that her anger was fainting, a tiny little bit at least.
“I should have told you as soon as I made the decision, probably I already should have told you right away after I got the offer but I felt like it was a decision that I had to do all by myself. And after I had made this decision I didn’t know how to tell you. I really didn’t know how to make it clear to you that I was not leaving you but the job that this was meant to be a break from the job and not from you, that I didn’t need a break from you but from the job… I didn’t know how to tell you about my sabbatical and not to hurt you at the same time, because I know six weeks is a very, very long time. So I tried to ignore the fact that January the fourth was so close already and… when I told the others today and you weren’t around I knew I would have to tell you as soon as possible because… I know I should have told you before the others, at least I should have done that.”
He hoped she would understand, but she didn’t look like she did.
“I deserve it that you leave me now, I wish you wouldn’t, Baby I wish you wouldn’t want to leave me but I would probably leave myself for what I did as well so I can’t blame you.” He felt tears rising up in his eyes. He had never felt so lost, she was his everything, and if she’d leave him then he’d be nothing. “I know I swore that I would never hurt you again and I broke that vow, but I really didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I am really sorry. I regret this with all my heart Sara. You are my,”
“The five minutes are over.” She interrupted him. “I’d like to have my key now.”
Defeated he nodded and letting himself drop down into his chair again he fumbled with his bunch of keys. As he had freed hers from the key ring he handed it over to her with a shaking hand and as her fingers entwined around the cold metal and grazed his he refused to let go of it.
“Gil,” She protested softly.
He hated it when she called him Gil; she only called him Gil when she was angry. She had told him once that calling him Grissom was what she did at work, at home she’d call him Griss, that would make her feel more comfortable than calling him Gil, because calling him Gil always felt like they didn’t know each other at all, it made her feel distant.
“At least let me get my stuff from your place, when you get the chance to get yours from mine then… that would only be fair.”
She shook her head in disbelieve. “Oh come on, don’t you tell me what is fair and what’s not.” She tugged on the key more forcefully. “Besides, you don’t have any stuff at my apartment. Even I don’t have anything at my apartment anymore except for the furniture; even my mail is delivered to your place.”
He let go of the key, she was right. And if separation was what she wanted now then he couldn’t blame her. “I don’t want you to leave me.” He told her again.
“Well, you should have thought of that before.” She tried to make her voice sound cold but he knew her too well and it was easy for him to tell how close she was to breaking out into tears. “You cannot even imagine how much you hurt me, can you? Damn it, for the first time in my life I thought I could trust someone, really trust someone. For the first time in my life I felt safe… and you destroyed all of that.” A single tear escaped from her eyes and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Twenty-one months, kicked and ground into the dirt.” With that said she turned around and left his office, almost running into Brass.
After she had mumbled a short excuse she was gone. Grissom closed his eyes for a second to take a deep breath, not willing to let her words settle into his mind yet because then he wouldn’t be able to hold back his own tears anymore. There were only few things that had ever made him cry, his father’s death, his mother’s death and the thought of losing Sara. And now he had lost her.
“What was that?” Jim asked after a moment.
Grissom opened his eyes again. “I screwed it up,” he mumbled almost inaudible.
“You screwed Sara or you screwed it up with Sara?”
“Both.” He didn’t realize what he had just said until he noticed Jim’s shocked expression. “I… I mean I…” So how was he supposed to talk himself out of this again?
“You and Sara?” Brass asked, still in disbelief or denial, Grissom couldn’t tell what exactly it was.
“Yes, me and Sara… well until she stormed out of my office this very moment.” He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his forehead.
“What happened?” Brass took a seat and threw an asking look at him.
“I didn’t tell her about my plans to go on sabbatical.” He confessed after a moment.
“Oh damn, Gil you should have known better.” Jim sighed.
“I know, I know that now. I just didn’t know how to tell her, and then I had to tell the others today and… and didn’t manage to talk with her before that so she found out from someone else.”
“And now she broke up with you?”
“She didn’t say it exactly, but she demanded her key back and told me she’d leave mine on the breakfast table when she’d pick up all her stuff from my house, guess that qualifies as official break up statement.”
Jim shook his head. “And you returned her key to her?”
“Of course I did, what else was I supposed to do?” Grissom asked even more desperate now than he had already been.
“Fight for her?”
“Jim, you don’t know how much pain I already caused in the past. When she gave me the chance to make all this up to her I vowed that I would never hurt her again and now I did.” He fought back his tears. “I never deserved her, its maybe better like this… if it ends with me being the asshole then she can move on and… I mean this way it’s better than,” he sighed. “Never mind.”
“You love her?”
“She’s my life, everything, she’s everything to me.” He confessed.
“And she loves you?”
“She waited almost eight years for me to finally find out what to do about my feelings for her and when I did find out she was still there, I don’t think that she’d have had the patience for that if she didn’t love me.”
“And, being aware of these two facts, you plan on not to fight for her but to leave Vegas for six weeks? You think that will make it any better?”
Now Grissom knew where Jim was heading with all his questions. He shook his head. “It won’t make it any better. Time heals all wounds but I doubt it can heal bullet wounds if the bullets are still stuck in your heart.”
Jim chuckled. “Nice quote.”
“It’s not a quote, that conclusion just hit me.” He shrugged.
Jim gave him a reassuring smile. “Pick up the shards and glue them back together.”
Grissom nodded and started rummaging the top drawer of his desk, searching for something he’d been keeping there for a long time. Eventually he found it and smiled to himself, taking the small box out of the drawer and putting it on his desk.
“What’s that?” Brass asked curiously.
“The glue, hopefully.”
THE END
AN: Thanks to Rhee for beta reading! I was forced to write this, more or less, since I lost a bet that I was 150 percent sure I would win.
Pairing: GSR
Genre: Angst
Warning: SPOILERS FOR LEAVING LAS VEGAS!!!!!! Big time!
Summary: ...Spoiler free?? Then don't read any further!!
Sara finds out about Grissom's plans and confronts him - more or less
Leaving Las Vegas
The sound of a folder being thrown onto his desk made him look up from his book, his eyes wandered up over her body until they reached her face. Judging from her expression he was fortunate the folder hadn’t been thrown right into his face. He swallowed hard. She was standing; she didn’t even consider taking a seat; that meant she was angry, really angry. And she wasn’t just angry; she did her best to hold back her tears. She knew it. He didn’t know who had told her but someone had…
“I closed the case.” She said after a moment, staring down at the folder.
For a second he hoped she might take a deep breath and would give him one of those little smiles that he loved so much. It would never happen but he’d remain optimistic until he’d been proven wrong, which, to his misfortune, happened pretty quickly.
“Oh,” She started again. “And I’d like to have my key back.”
It felt as if his heart had stopped beating. It pretty much felt like someone had pushed the ‘pause’ button and only him and Sara were still on ‘play’. A pain that he couldn’t really define grew up in his chest and traveled through his body, he tried to swallow it but he couldn’t. He felt how he started to shake and tried to suppress it but didn’t succeed.
And she just continued staring down at the folder, as if she knew that if she had to look at him she’d take it back again. God he prayed that she would take it back. He had made a mistake, yes. A big mistake and he would admit that, he’d do anything if it would change her mind.
“Sara,” He tried but she cut him off.
“When did you plan on telling me?” She raised an eyebrow and finally looked at him, crossing her arms over her chest as if to shield herself from him.
“I, I wanted to… I would have told you. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.” He didn’t know the exact answer to her question though; he had pushed away the thought of telling her about his plan to leave whenever it had occurred to him.
“You would have told me? Gil, you are leaving Vegas in four hours, when did you plan on telling me?” She shook her head. “Or did you plan to simply leave me a post-it on the breakfast table? So that when I come home with the grocery bags in my arms and enter the kitchen it would be the first thing I’d see?”
She wasn’t just mad or angry, she was hurt and he had promised her to never, never ever hurt her again, he had sworn it. She had all the right in the world to be mad like hell and in this very moment she made use of it.
“And what would you have written on there? Something like ‘Hey Honey, I’ll be back in six weeks, bye Grissom’? Or,” She made a short pause. “Or, something that would be more typical for you, something like ‘Will not be here for six weeks; G; period.’… Yeah, I bet that is the note I am going to find when I go home,” She swallowed hard and corrected herself. “When I go to your place, to get all my stuff from there.”
“Sara, I,” She cut him off again.
“You had enough time on your hands to talk about certain things with me; you didn’t and now you just have to accept the consequences.” She told him, her voice getting angrier. “I will leave your key on the breakfast table, next to the post-it.” She turned around and was about to leave when he found his voice back in full strength.
“Damn it Sara, at least give me a chance to explain it!” He didn’t even notice that he had left his seat and was now standing nor had he noticed he had been screaming until the two day shift CSIs in the hallway gave him a weird look. He swallowed his frustration in order to calm down. “Please, let me explain. I know I don’t deserve it but give me the chance to explain it to you.”
“Well I shouldn’t leave without my key anyway.” She said and walked back over to his desk.
“Take a seat.” He pleaded.
“No, you have five minutes to explain this to me and then I want my key back, then I will do my best to swallow the urge to scratch off every inch of the varnish from your car with it on my way to the parking lot and then I will… then I will leave all this shit behind me and start forgetting you and I will,” This time he was the one to cut her off.
“Five minutes, I won’t need more.” He took a deep breath. “I am an asshole. I am not going to deny that, but I really didn’t mean to hurt you. I, I was asked if I’d like to teach this seminar at Williams College and I really wanted to, but there was the case with the serial killer and there was you and… and on the other hand I… I felt I was burning out and when our serial killer killed himself in front of my eyes I knew that I needed to get away. So this was the best chance to do it.”
At least from her expression he could tell that her anger was fainting, a tiny little bit at least.
“I should have told you as soon as I made the decision, probably I already should have told you right away after I got the offer but I felt like it was a decision that I had to do all by myself. And after I had made this decision I didn’t know how to tell you. I really didn’t know how to make it clear to you that I was not leaving you but the job that this was meant to be a break from the job and not from you, that I didn’t need a break from you but from the job… I didn’t know how to tell you about my sabbatical and not to hurt you at the same time, because I know six weeks is a very, very long time. So I tried to ignore the fact that January the fourth was so close already and… when I told the others today and you weren’t around I knew I would have to tell you as soon as possible because… I know I should have told you before the others, at least I should have done that.”
He hoped she would understand, but she didn’t look like she did.
“I deserve it that you leave me now, I wish you wouldn’t, Baby I wish you wouldn’t want to leave me but I would probably leave myself for what I did as well so I can’t blame you.” He felt tears rising up in his eyes. He had never felt so lost, she was his everything, and if she’d leave him then he’d be nothing. “I know I swore that I would never hurt you again and I broke that vow, but I really didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I am really sorry. I regret this with all my heart Sara. You are my,”
“The five minutes are over.” She interrupted him. “I’d like to have my key now.”
Defeated he nodded and letting himself drop down into his chair again he fumbled with his bunch of keys. As he had freed hers from the key ring he handed it over to her with a shaking hand and as her fingers entwined around the cold metal and grazed his he refused to let go of it.
“Gil,” She protested softly.
He hated it when she called him Gil; she only called him Gil when she was angry. She had told him once that calling him Grissom was what she did at work, at home she’d call him Griss, that would make her feel more comfortable than calling him Gil, because calling him Gil always felt like they didn’t know each other at all, it made her feel distant.
“At least let me get my stuff from your place, when you get the chance to get yours from mine then… that would only be fair.”
She shook her head in disbelieve. “Oh come on, don’t you tell me what is fair and what’s not.” She tugged on the key more forcefully. “Besides, you don’t have any stuff at my apartment. Even I don’t have anything at my apartment anymore except for the furniture; even my mail is delivered to your place.”
He let go of the key, she was right. And if separation was what she wanted now then he couldn’t blame her. “I don’t want you to leave me.” He told her again.
“Well, you should have thought of that before.” She tried to make her voice sound cold but he knew her too well and it was easy for him to tell how close she was to breaking out into tears. “You cannot even imagine how much you hurt me, can you? Damn it, for the first time in my life I thought I could trust someone, really trust someone. For the first time in my life I felt safe… and you destroyed all of that.” A single tear escaped from her eyes and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Twenty-one months, kicked and ground into the dirt.” With that said she turned around and left his office, almost running into Brass.
After she had mumbled a short excuse she was gone. Grissom closed his eyes for a second to take a deep breath, not willing to let her words settle into his mind yet because then he wouldn’t be able to hold back his own tears anymore. There were only few things that had ever made him cry, his father’s death, his mother’s death and the thought of losing Sara. And now he had lost her.
“What was that?” Jim asked after a moment.
Grissom opened his eyes again. “I screwed it up,” he mumbled almost inaudible.
“You screwed Sara or you screwed it up with Sara?”
“Both.” He didn’t realize what he had just said until he noticed Jim’s shocked expression. “I… I mean I…” So how was he supposed to talk himself out of this again?
“You and Sara?” Brass asked, still in disbelief or denial, Grissom couldn’t tell what exactly it was.
“Yes, me and Sara… well until she stormed out of my office this very moment.” He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his forehead.
“What happened?” Brass took a seat and threw an asking look at him.
“I didn’t tell her about my plans to go on sabbatical.” He confessed after a moment.
“Oh damn, Gil you should have known better.” Jim sighed.
“I know, I know that now. I just didn’t know how to tell her, and then I had to tell the others today and… and didn’t manage to talk with her before that so she found out from someone else.”
“And now she broke up with you?”
“She didn’t say it exactly, but she demanded her key back and told me she’d leave mine on the breakfast table when she’d pick up all her stuff from my house, guess that qualifies as official break up statement.”
Jim shook his head. “And you returned her key to her?”
“Of course I did, what else was I supposed to do?” Grissom asked even more desperate now than he had already been.
“Fight for her?”
“Jim, you don’t know how much pain I already caused in the past. When she gave me the chance to make all this up to her I vowed that I would never hurt her again and now I did.” He fought back his tears. “I never deserved her, its maybe better like this… if it ends with me being the asshole then she can move on and… I mean this way it’s better than,” he sighed. “Never mind.”
“You love her?”
“She’s my life, everything, she’s everything to me.” He confessed.
“And she loves you?”
“She waited almost eight years for me to finally find out what to do about my feelings for her and when I did find out she was still there, I don’t think that she’d have had the patience for that if she didn’t love me.”
“And, being aware of these two facts, you plan on not to fight for her but to leave Vegas for six weeks? You think that will make it any better?”
Now Grissom knew where Jim was heading with all his questions. He shook his head. “It won’t make it any better. Time heals all wounds but I doubt it can heal bullet wounds if the bullets are still stuck in your heart.”
Jim chuckled. “Nice quote.”
“It’s not a quote, that conclusion just hit me.” He shrugged.
Jim gave him a reassuring smile. “Pick up the shards and glue them back together.”
Grissom nodded and started rummaging the top drawer of his desk, searching for something he’d been keeping there for a long time. Eventually he found it and smiled to himself, taking the small box out of the drawer and putting it on his desk.
“What’s that?” Brass asked curiously.
“The glue, hopefully.”
THE END
