there's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth

there's still a little bit of you laced with my doubt

it's still a little hard to say what's going on

He put his fingertips together, almost as if in prayer. He looked like a small, nervous schoolboy.

He looked reluctant.

Her reluctant lover.

I'll miss you.

And just like that, he was gone.

Well, hell.

How did we end up here, anyway? How did we end up with your saying Goodbye to me in an empty locker room, before disappearing out of my life?

Not forever, she reminded herself. She repeated the words like a mantra. She clung to them like she was going down for the third time.

Not forever.

But, still.

She didn't say she would miss him, too, although her mouth was full to bursting with those very words. She didn't say it because she'd been saying it for six years in one way or another. It seemed to her that all her actions, all her expressions, all her life had funneled down and down to form the shape and substance of those three words.

I'll miss you.

If he left. If he walked out of her life. If he met someone else.

I'll miss you.

And now he was gone.

Being at work was surprisingly easy. It was busy and meticulous and it kept her mind and her hands occupied. If she was surrounded by people that didn't particularly thrill her, they at least kept her amused. Distracted. She wouldn't call her colleagues her friends, exactly, but they were the closest thing to friends she had these days.

Going home to her apartment was the hardest thing. She knew it would be, but still. The first night she wandered around for almost half an hour in the gathering dark, through the shadows pooling around her belongings, touching and thinking because she didn't know what else to do with her hands and her thoughts.

This chair. This is where I sat when he held my hand. When I spilled my past and my guts to him and I cried and he took my hand. I could have kissed him then. Easily. I could have taken him into my bed and never looked back and not regretted.

But.

And here. The kitchen sink, where I wetted a paper towel to wipe dirt off his face and I caught him off guard and he caught me off guard because he kissed me, fast, soft. The first time, the first kiss, but not the last.

The couch. Even in the swelling darkness she knew her face flushing, the colour rising up the pale skin of her neck into her cheeks. This was where it had started that night after Adam Trent held a ceramic knife against her throat and she'd wondered if she ever would get a chance to kiss Grissom after all. He'd shown up at her apartment late, his face haggard and with no words. No words at all. They'd started with hands and hair and progressed rapidly to lips and clothes. Too many clothes.

My bed. A fairly unremarkable looking piece of furniture, but Sara could barely look at it now without her pulse accelerating and another pulse flickering between her legs. Sheets, blankets, pillows. They all reminded her of him and smelled like him but she couldn't wash them, wouldn't wash them, at least for the next four weeks.

She crawled onto the bed, slowly, and let herself fall, slowly. She wrapped the comforter around her, cocooning herself. Maybe she would emerge in four weeks, or so, a butterfly. She pushed her face into the pillows. She breathed him in.

She loved him, and she hated him for not being here.

It never ceased to amaze her how entwined those two emotions were.

Oh, Gris. Come home soon.

there's still a little bit of your face i haven't kissed

you step a little closer each day

that i can't say what's going on

The problem, he finally deduced, was that he had gone and told her he would miss her. That's where all the trouble had started.

Because he missed her much more than he thought he would. More than he wanted to, if he was being honest.

And Gil Grissom was nothing if not an honest man.

Wasn't he?

It was just one of the many reasons he had been so reluctant to get… involved … with her in the first place. His concentration was all shot to hell. Here he was ready to embrace an exciting teaching prospect, a wonderful career opportunity and all he could think about was embracing her.

It wasn't that he didn't want to think about her. He enjoyed thinking about her, but he had work to do, so much work. Preparation. Notes to write. People to meet. Books to read.

Sleep to get.

He knew that part would be hard, but still. Every time he lay down and reached for oblivion she was there, behind his eyelids, smirking at him in that way she had that made his heart hurt and his groin tighten. Her hair splayed across the pillow, tickling his nose, emitting a scent he didn't think was possible from human hair. The weight of her on the mattress next to him, pulling his own body inexorably towards her. He'd spent so much time, so much energy, so many years, working to keep his distance, physically and emotionally, and now all he wanted, all he craved (as he knew he would), was her body, her heat, her soft breath, next to him in this foreign, dank-smelling bed in off-campus housing for guest lecturers.

The entire Williams campus was probably having sex right now, while he lay there pining over a woman who was most likely cursing his very existence.

He opened his eyes and sighed. The small bedside clock read 2:24 a.m. Should he? Should he call, just to say hi? Was that the kind of thing people in his situation did? It probably was, and other people probably did it all the time without all this internal anguish.

She was probably awake, knowing her.

Knowing her.

He smiled in the dark because he was allowed to used that phrase now, because he did, know her.

He knew, for instance, how she looked when she woke up in the morning (tousled, lovely). He knew the colour of her favourite comfortable sit-at-home-and-listen-to-music shirt (pink). Being a man, he didn't pay attention to clothing colour in general, but he knew without a doubt that he'd never, ever, seen Sara Sidle in anything pink. Except at home. Her home, where he spent an inordinate amount of time these days.

And, he knew other things.

He knew what her face looked like when she climaxed and how her neck and body arched beneath his and trembled and how she clutched his shoulders convulsively and Oh Lord he better stop. Now.

Stop.

Breathe.

Think.

Mosquitoes.

There.

Yes, it all started when he told her he would miss her. He tried not to think about the fact that she hadn't said it back.

It didn't matter.

Right?

Right.

I'll call her and see how she is and she'll answer the phone and I'll hear her voice, that voice that could never be mistaken for anyone else's voice in the entire world and I'll feel better, for a little while at least.

Until the next time he happened to think about how her skin tasted and how her mouth moved under his and the texture of her hair and-–

Stopstopstop.

Maybe this time he would tell her he loved her.

As that thought invaded his brain he rolled onto his back, sweat breaking out along his hairline. He thought rationally about it for a moment. He knew he loved her and he'd known it for much longer than he cared to admit, being an honest man and all, but why did the thought of telling her that make his stomach suddenly feel cold and hard, filled with lead, heavy as a cannonball?

Goodnight, honey. Sleep well. I love you.

There. Simple as that.

Except.

What if she didn't say it back? It was a definite possibility. She hadn't said she would miss him. What if she didn't say she loved him? He really didn't think he would take that omission nearly as well.

So, it would be better to not say it at all.

Except.

He did love her, and he did want to say it.

Conundrum.

He closed his eyes again and there she was again, reaching out for him, touching his face, his hair, sliding her hand down his chest, down down down, saying things, whispering things he never dreamed he'd hear Sara Sidle whisper, and to him least of all—-

Mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes.

there's still a little bit of your words i long to hear

you step a little closer to me

so close that i can't see what's going on

Her phone rang at precisely 6 a.m.

Grissom.

Who else?

She wasn't sleeping, but she wasn't awake, either. She was somewhere in the middle, floating uneasily between dreams and reality and neither seemed particularly more appealing than the other.

She let two full rings trill in the morning silence before she reached over and answered softly.

"Hello."

"I love you," he said all at once in one expelled breath like a dam broken. She figured she was still dreaming so she allowed herself the luxury of pretending it really did just happen. And then, more calmly, "Hello."

"Where are you?" she said.

"Uh…I'm here. Massachusetts. In my room, actually. It looks like a dorm, or what I always imagined a dorm would look like."

"Met any hot co-eds yet?" she joked as the bottom fell out of her stomach.

"Classes don't start until Monday." He paused. "There's snow here."

"Really?" Through sheer force of will she pushed the threatening tears back into her eyes. She did not want him to hear that kind of emotion in her voice. Not yet. He just left for God's sakes.

"It's beautiful."

"I bet. Bring some back for me."

"I will."

"Okay." Her stomach hurt. Talking to him on the phone was just as awkward and painful and stupid as she imagined it to be. She wanted to hang up and go back to sleep. She didn't want to think about him in the place where he was right now, with snow and books and young, eager students.

As young and eager as she had been, once.

"Well. I have to get ready for work. Shower and dress and eat and obsess and all that stuff. You know."

"Of course. I'll let you go."

She pictured his face, slightly puzzled and wounded and wondering, as always, if he missed something, some sign or signal that he should have caught.

"Sara?" he said just as she was about to say good-bye.

"Yeah?"

Quietly, carefully. "I do love you. I should…I should say these things more often, I know. I think them. I know you should hear them. It's important. That you know."

She nodded.

"Good luck, out there, with everything. The course. Everything. I hope…I hope you find what you need."

"See you soon," he said quietly.

"Grissom?" she said then thought it was too late, that he'd hung up, was gone again.

"Yes?" Eager, at least for him.

"I miss you, too."

She could hear him smiling. She hung up the phone and pushed her face into the pillows and thought about snow and teachers and her living room couch and mosquitoes.

She thought about what she could do for the next four weeks.

She thought about how she could tell him she loved him without completely losing herself.

love taught me to lie

life, it taught me to die

so it's not hard to fall

when you float like a cannonball

Damien Rice cannonball