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Two Days
Gil Grissom, the
infamous workaholic, has a new addiction…
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Her
laughter was like warm cherry pie, slipping down his throat and into his belly;
at once sating his appetite and leaving him hungry for more.
He
casually glanced into the break room on his way past, curious as to the source
of her mirth. Laughter bubbled forth again, her amusement the result of
something Nick or Greg had said – he didn’t notice which. All he could hear
were the dulcet tones of her laughter, pealing off the walls, searing into his
soul.
She
was a siren to him, a smoky-eyed goddess of desire that at once confused and
made everything so very clear. She was the temptation he would not allow
himself to have, the ambrosia fit only for the gods, not for a pathetic mortal
like himself.
Until
the day he relented, allowed himself to taste her nectar. And nothing had been
the same again.
Love
and passion were something his analytical mind had understood from afar, not
experience first-hand. He didn’t realize how utterly complicated and completely
simple they made everything. He experienced them as he would one of his
experiments – immersing himself fully, devoting every
ounce of his attention, to the detriment of everything else.
Sleeping
and eating no long seemed important. He would arrive at the lab, his eyes
darkly ringed and vague, and somnambulate through his working hours until he
could return home and be alone with her.
She
lived under a veil of blissful ignorance for weeks, perhaps months; like him,
living for their moments together. Until the night she found him in his office,
staring off into space.
She
had entered as she knocked on the door frame, eyes fixed on the report in front
of her, addressing him as she walked.
“Griss,
the trace results have come back on the Johnson case,” she announced.
When
he elicited no reply, she looked up. Eyes fixed and glazed over; she was
tempted to believe he was actually asleep with his eyes open.
“Grissom?”
No
reply.
“Griss?”
He
didn’t even blink.
“Gil!”
His
head snapped around, eyes blinking furiously as though trying rid themselves of
sand.
“Sara?
How long have you been standing there?”
“Long
enough,” she replied, concerned. “Where were you?”
“Hmm?”
he replied, shuffling papers on his desk aimlessly, trying to look productive.
“I’ve been here. Uh… working.”
“Working?”
A nod.
“On?”
A blank stare.
She
looked nervously back over her shoulder at the bustling lab and crossed the
room again to shut the door. Bemused, Grissom watched as she returned and sat
down opposite him.
“What’s
going on?” she asked seriously. “Cath was complaining to me the other day that
you left her alone with the experiment you were both doing with that fetal pig.
That’s not like you.”
He
shrugged. “I had paperwork to…”
She
cut him off. “You haven’t been focusing like you used to at scenes. Everyone’s
been commenting on it. The Doc asked me if you were sick yesterday. He says
you’ve haven’t sat in on an autopsy in nearly two weeks.”
“Well,
I’ve been busy, and…”
“To
think I was worried about work coming between us.” There was no shortage of
irony in her tone. “I never dreamed it would be the other way around.”
He
looked blank. Then he tried to look nonchalant. Finally, he chuckled and
brushed it off. “Our relationship is not interfering with my job, Sara.”
One eyebrow arched. “Really?
What case are you working on?”
“Uh…”
He really thought about it. “The Brinkman case? Double
homicide.”
“Good
guess, Bugman.” She rolled her eyes. “We closed that three days ago.”
She
was clearly being irrational, he thought. Their relationship wasn’t distracting
him at all. As his eyes traced the
contours of her body, he wondered if she had on the black lace bra or the soft
pink with the butterflies he liked so much…
“Grissom!” Her voice broke through his reverie. “You’re
zoning out again.”
“Sorry.”
He looked sheepish. Then he grinned mischievously. “What color bra are you
wearing today?”
Her
cheeks flushed, but she shook it off, her determination outweighing her
embarrassment.
“That’s
it, buster. I’m cutting you off.”
He
winced. “Excuse me?”
“We’ve
been spending too much time together. We’ve been involved for, what? Not even
three months. And aside for the first two weeks or so of dating, have we
actually spent a single day away from each other?”
“Well,
there was that one night you went out of town on a case…”
“Grissom!”
she cut in again, her frustration clearly growing by the moment. “This isn’t
healthy. We’re both workaholic, anti-social, extremely private people. Now
we’re permanently joined at the hip. We’re losing our balance.”
He
was confused. “Our balance?”
A nod. “We need to find some kind of balance between
our work and our private lives. Which clearly isn’t going to
be easy, since neither of us have ever been remotely balanced in the past.
Only now, the pendulum has swung entirely the other way.”
He
sighed. “I suppose it has. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? I
mean, I thought this is what you wanted.” He looked uncertain, suddenly.
Worried, perhaps, that she’d changed her mind about him after all.
“It
is what I want, babe. But I want it all. The wonderfully
rewarding career and the geeky yet
incredibly sexy lover. But right now, we seem to be focusing on one to
the detriment of the other.”
He
rose from his chair and circled the desk. He reached down and caressed her long
neck, tracing her arms with his fingertips, before capturing her hands in his
own and pulling her out of the chair and into his arms.
“Did
you lock the door?” he breathed into her hair.
Her
body was locked in a battle with itself; half of her wanting to melt into him
right here and now, to let him swipe away the endless paperwork and take her
right there on his desk. The other half, the one screaming into the ear Grissom
wasn’t busy nibbling on, was telling her that this wasn’t the time or the place
to be getting down and dirty with the boss.
“Grissssssssssss,” she moaned as his teeth teased at the
most sensitive part of her neck. She could feel her pulse building, her
breathing become more shallow. God, the things he
could do to her…
She
felt his hand skirt up her back, underneath her shirt, tracing the contours of
her spine. He released her neck, his hungry lips finding her feverish ones, devouring
her, leaving her more breathless than before.
The
hand on her back slid round to her stomach and meandered its way upwards. When
she felt it cup her breast, his thumb press against one hardened nipple, she
pulled away.
“We
are so not doing this here.”
She
was panting and flushed, and fine line of sweat beading her brow. He just
looked smug.
“God
but you’re beautiful,” he told her, completely unaffected by the fact that they
were at work with only a thin layer of glass and blinds separating them from
the rest of the world.
“What
the hell has gotten into you?” she asked him.
He
smirked and moved towards her again. She put one hand to his chest, fending him
off.
“That’s
it. This morning, after shift, I’m going home. Alone.”
She
could literally hear his jaw hit the floor.
“What?”
“Griss,
I haven’t slept properly in three months.
I know how everyone likes to joke about me being the woman that never sleeps,
but I do. I need to sleep.” She was
becoming faintly hysterical. “Especially
given the additional… activities
we’ve been engaged in lately. And three or four hours of unconsciousness after
hours spent making love, talking and generally worshipping each other just
isn’t getting it done for me anymore.”
He
would have argued, but his own dark circles and exhaustion shut him up.
“And
you look like you need a week in bed, at the very least.”
The
devil got into him again. “That’s an offer I can’t refuse…”
“Jesus,
Gil!” she snapped, exasperated. “We’re taking two days off. Sleeping
alone, in our own beds.”
“Two
nights?” he whimpered, and she nodded.
“And
from now on, we spend our days off together, and no more than one or two days
per week when we’re working. That’s it.”
He
was utterly flummoxed. “That’s… impossible.”
“Grissom,
we spent just about every day of our lives alone before we got together. I
think we can cope.”
He
reached up and took the hand that was pushing him back. Tenderly, he stroked
the soft skin and brought it up to his lips. “I just… I love being with you.”
She
softened. “I love being with you too. But… don’t you ever… worry?”
He
frowned, not knowing what she meant. “Worry about what?”
She
sighed. “That it’s all… too much, too soon? That we’re so hot and heavy now
that we’ll… burn out?”
She
had totally lost him. “What are you talking about?”
Her
eyes, dark and damp, met his. “Thermite.”
Confusion. Then recognition.
“Sara, I wasn’t talking about us.”
She
impatiently swept away a rogue tear. “I know. But… it got me thinking. I don’t want
this to be some wild fling that burns itself out in a couple of month.”
He
let go of her hand and cradled her face in both of his. “Honey, it won’t be.”
She
closed her eyes and absorbed the reassurance his hands offered her. They were
like finely tuned instruments, she found herself thinking, fit for many
purposes. As skillfully as they could collect evidence or dust for prints, they
could also salve her broken soul, show her endless tenderness and love, and
bring her body to the very heights of desire.
“Can
we just… slow down? A little? Until
we get the balance right?”
He
nodded and kissed her forehead. “Anything you want.”
And
that was why he stood outside the break room, his insides aching for her. Two days.
He
had done as she had asked; left her alone to go out for breakfast after work
with Nick and Greg, before going home to her own apartment to sleep without
him. He in his turn had taken Catherine out for a meal on the first day of
their abstinence. On the second, he sat in Brass’s office for a glass of
Scotch. Both days he returned to his townhouse, one part of him frustrated and
lonely; the other secretly glad of the chance to get some rest.
He
drank the sight of her in now, knowing that in only a few short but agonizing
hours, he could take her home. He noted that she looked rested. With a clearer
head, he now felt bad that his overzealous approach to their relationship had
brought them both to the brink of exhaustion.
She
sensed him watching her and looked across the room, meeting his gaze. A languid
smile spread on her face and he felt his desire stir once again. Returning her
smile, he finally forced himself away and back to his office.
Three
hours later, she was at his door.
“Hey.”
Her long body perched itself against his door frame and he couldn’t help but
trace those long lines with his eyes. “Ready to go?”
Tearing
his eyes away, he regarded his desk. “Hmm, maybe later.
I still have a lot of paperwork to do and with tomorrow being my day off…”
“Grissom!”
He
smirked, enjoying her frustration. Clearly, the two days apart had been just as
hard on her.
Relenting,
he winked at her. “Coming dear.”
He
gathered his briefcase and jacket and joined her at the door.
“I
hope you’re well rested,” her meaning dripping off her words like honey, as she
made her way to the exit with him. “How were your two days off?”
He
rested his hand on her lower back as he guided her out of the building, sliding
it a little lower than normal, enough to make her shudder with anticipation.
“Longest
two days of my life.”
THE END
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