Work Text:
“A lady's hair is her crowning glory”
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"No, honey, something is wrong here."
Grissom was lying on his back half tucked inside the cabinet under the kitchen sink. The white T-shirt he was wearing was half soaked and splashed with water from previous attempts gone wrong. "This piece must be defective," he declared.
Sitting on the floor, between him and the toolbox, Sara huffed. "We just bought it…!"
Grissom asked her for a spanner, but she handed him one of the wrong kind.
"Ah, this hair!" she complained as rummaging through the box and looking more carefully. “I can't get it out of my face. Tomorrow or the day after, I'm going to the salon to get it cut."
Grissom took the new spanner Sara handed him and resumed fiddling with the pipe.
"You could arrange it in a tail," he proposed, focused on what he was doing under the sink.
Receiving no response, after a moment he cast a glance down at Sara.
She waved her plastered arm in the air. "I'm finding it a little difficult at the moment," she commented amusedly.
Grissom came out of the cabinet and sat leg-crossed.
"I can do it," he said.
He gave her a coy smile and leaned forward slightly in front of her to get the tongs from the toolbox. He started messing about the new but defective piece of pipe.
"Do you want to tie my hair?" Sara asked amused, watching him flatten the edge of the plastic tube with the tongs.
He smiled to himself and gave a couple more grips. "I’ve been doing something a little more intimate with you than tying your hair for some time now," he murmured, placing the tongs beside him. He lifted his gaze to Sara, and the small smile from before took on a smug quality. "You once shaved me. I think tying your hair is less dangerous to your safety," he joked quietly.
He had her hand him the scissors and made a couple of adjustments to the pipe. Then he squeezed back inside the cabinet.
"We'll do it as soon as we're done here," he decided as making another attempt.
It took a couple more tries, but intelligence prevailed over matter eventually, and the pipe was fixed.
*
"Okay, so...how do you prefer it, high tail or low tail?" Grissom asked behind Sara's back, looking at her in the bathroom mirror.
Sara looked at herself for a moment. "How do you prefer it?" she asked then.
Grissom took Sara's request seriously and scrutinized her face. Suddenly his countenance brightened up.
"High. Is that...a ponytail, right?" Sara confirmed with a gleeful smile. "Is that the easiest one to do?" Grissom asked soon after, hopeful.
"Hmm, maybe not. But…you're a genius, so you shouldn't have any problem..."
Grissom checked the situation, then took the rubber band and put it on his wrist.
He began to gather Sara's hair into a tail at the nape of her neck, but he noticed that as he pulled it up to have the binding at the top of her head, the hair on the top side made a wave. Looking at the arrangement, he realized what the problem was. So he dropped everything and started over. Holding his fingers open like a comb, he began to run them through Sara's hair. He started with the ones on top, from the forehead toward himself. At each passage, he gathered more hair in his other hand. He did the same on the sides, from the temples and back, gathering the bunch of hair on the crown of Sara's head. When he finished on the right, he did the same on the left. Then he moved on to the back, starting at the base of the neck and going up, again with combing fingers.
At the beginning of the work, Sara had been intrigued by the concentrated look with which Grissom followed the maneuvers and smiled softly, watching him in the mirror. The passage of Grissom's fingers through her hair, however, had an extremely relaxing effect, and she spent most of the time with her eyes closed, enjoying each passage of his fingers, feeling cared for in a way and with an intensity she had never experienced.
"Okay, now the rubber band," she heard Grissom mumble to himself. "Tell me if I pull your hair."
She remained with her eyes closed. "M-mh."
Grissom succeeded in the task without any trouble. "There you go," he announced, full of pride.
He had done a good job, Sara had to admit. The tail hairline was slightly further to the right than where it should have been, but overall the work was nice to look at.
She smiled, with a weakness brought on by fatigue and relaxation. Grissom's face behind her in the mirror was happy.
"Thank you," she whispered. The character of her voice much more appreciative than it normally would have been.
He gently laid his hands on her shoulders. "Will you let me help you?" he whispered close to her ear, his eyes locked in hers in the mirror.
She became a little embarrassed, but a smile spread across her lips. She diverted her gaze and snuggled into Grissom's arms, which wrapped around her waist.
"Perhaps…you can help me even now," she said, returning her gaze to the reflection of the two of them, with an air that Grissom found seductive.
"Tell me."
She twisted her mouth a little and lowered her gaze again. She played with the hair on one of Grissom's forearms at her waist. "I..." she barely laughed, "I liked this hair thing."
"Funny, wasn't it?" Grissom rejoiced.
"I liked it in a, uh, unexpected way."
Only then did she raise her gaze, in time to see the expression in Grissom's eyes change. They suddenly became very alert.
"Oh."
"M-mh."
Grissom's gaze lowered to the cast on Sara's arm reflected in the mirror.
"The arm won't be a problem," she said, sensing his puzzlement.
That was the first time they made love since Sara had left the hospital.