Chapter Text
It was proving to be a mild Autumn, cool more than cold. The carotenoids, the anthocyanins, and the flavones were already showing the real colors of leaves, which from various shades of green had taken on different tonalities of red, orange and yellow. The leaves still on the branches had started to wrinkle, while the fallen ones were crispy under the soles. At that time of the year, for reasons no one knew, the lab always looked like a populous ants' nest more than a place where brilliant – in most cases – minds worked to beat the band.
For a convergence strictly set by the Universe, one day of that Autumn, Grissom and Sara found each other in the elevator alone together. Direction: the lab parking lot. Grissom was going to the police station for a meeting with Brass for the Jackson case; Sara to her apartment, where she would wash and change, before coming back to the lab to help Nick with the Slokovic case.
It was the coldest hour of the night. The sterile silence inside the elevator almost made the ears ring in contrast with the continuous buzz circulating the hallways of the lab.
"Did you have a nice day?" Grissom asked briefly after the elevator moved.
At that time, the relationship between Grissom and Sara had reached a level that a question of such a kind did not represent – for both of them – a possible source of embarrassment or diversions anymore.
Yet, they had never come back to the level of clear intellectual intimacy they used to have at the beginning of their acquaintance, when they first met in San Francisco. Sara's arrival in Las Vegas, for various reasons neither Grissom nor Sara had ever talked about, had cracked that intimacy over time. Like a sort of Chinese water torture, too much closeness – albeit never excessively physical – had broken the enchantment. It had shown taboos and weaknesses. Since Sara arrived in Vegas, Time had unrolled itself at a constant pace like a carpet before Grissom and Sara, day after day, second after second. Breath after breath.
Drop by drop, Time had eroded Grissom and Sara's psychophysical state, to the breaking point.
When they reached that point, Silence set in. When they could not even hear the ticking of the torturing drops anymore, only Silence remained. Thus, they were able to realize they had been objects of a torture no one but them had imposed on them. Grissom and Sara understood that those drops, refreshing against the heat of Nevada's desert at the beginning, had turned into scalding spurts coming out of a cauldron filled with perennial and continually grumbling thoughts. A cauldron they had put on the fire of their hopes and expectations and dreams and all the beauties that can be found in this world.
There had been a lack of sincerity, on one side; there had been an emotional extremism, on the other side.
With Silence, the content of the cauldron dried out. The cauldron broke. The fire of their hopes and expectations and dreams and all the beauties that can be found in this world, instead, kept burning. Only at that moment did Grissom and Sara realize how good the smell of that fire was. A smell that inebriated their senses.
So, inebriated, they were able to notice they were standing in the same room; for the whole time, while suffering under the scalding spurts of their thoughts, they had always been together. His scalding spurts burned her, and vice versa.
At that realization, they started curing each other’s wounds. They started talking, in a way that was not even close to that of the beginning of their relationship, when they first met in San Francisco. Quietly, in the mid-lit room isolated from the rest of the world, they talked.
Because of all this, a question like the one Grissom asked Sara in a silent elevator on an Autumnal night didn't raise any dread, was it reverential or deferential like in the past. At the beginning of their relationship, a question like Grissom's would have received only words in response. Now, instead, simple and ordinary questions, daily questions without any kind of strategic importance, like did you have a nice day? gave voice to answers that responded to all the questions they would ever want to ask each other.
To Grissom's question, Sara replied inattentively while wearing her hat.
"We make this world better one step at a time, right?"
Grissom gave a slight tilt of his head and he kept staring at Sara as she searched her bag, looking, he thought, for the car keys.
What Sara had said denoted clearly and neatly the behavior she recently seemed to keep towards life. The events of the last months – a missed promotion, an almost termination, the aggression by a patient in a criminal psychiatric institute – had reinforced her. Those events had given her character a Zen nuance which made her adapt to circumstances – whereas, before all those events, her attitude had more the feature of a reinforced concrete wall.
For a short moment, Grissom let himself be fascinated by a thought, which made another thought rise up, and then one more. At the end of all his reasoning, Grissom’s hand went instinctively to the push-button panel of the elevator and pressed STOP.
"Ok, uh...I-I would like to tell you something," he said, while the elevator was still shaking from the recoil of the abrupt stop.
Sara's look raised hesitantly at the ceiling of the elevator, came down on Grissom, for a moment fixed itself on the push-button panel, and finally landed on Grissom again with a bewildered expression.
"Ok," she said in a faltering voice.
He seemed on the edge of saying something sensational, and then spoke like someone getting rid of a burden.
"I've been thinking about your invitation lately…and I would like to accept it."
When he finished, he nervously clenched his lips.
Over the following seconds, Sara pondered what she had heard, while her look went resting on the push-button panel with an unchecked movement. What Grissom had just said really seemed something sensational, but -
"Excuse me…what invitation?" she asked, a half embarrassed smile on her lips.
Grissom didn't linger. "The dinner."
At his answer, Sara's eyes almost fell from her head. She stood jaw-dropped for some moments, stunned by the absurdity she had just heard. "You've been thinking about it…lately?" She burst into joyful laughter. "Almost three years have passed!" she pointed out without malice.
Grissom was relieved that Sara accepted his fault so lightly. He smiled. "Yeah, well…I've been busy," he tried to justify himself.
Sara laughed, quietly now, gently rocking her head without commenting on his excuse. She played with her car keys. She would’ve loved to ask Grissom what prompted the impelling need to inform her of his decision, and, most importantly, why he made that decision first. An elevator stopped on purpose, though, is certainly not the right place to scrutinize those topics, nor could give them the time and the tranquility needed to deal with such a discussion. If that was what Grissom really wanted, they would have had the time to talk extensively about that later.
She also decided that, given his refusal to her first invitation, she would let him manage the thing this time.
“And...in all your overthinking, have you picked a day, already?” she asked.
Grissom took a long breath while realizing that Sara had given him the responsibility of managing the situation in complete autonomy. "I haven’t picked a day, yet," he said, a bit disappointed.
A pensively nodding forerun Sara’s answer. "Well, it seems fair," she said, an echo of Grissom's disappointment in her voice. "I have to wait three more years to know that, probably."
Grissom bit his lower lip with a worried air on his face and didn't reply. At that, amused by his umpteenth silence, Sara pushed herself out, passing before him, to turn on the elevator. But -
"A barbecue," Grissom said in one breath. Those two words were enough to draw Sara's interest. She drew back her arm. "You know," Grissom added, "something like staying away from the city, doing something…uh, different … " He felt somewhat intimidated by Sara's silence, and so he explained further. "We both like nature…so -
"I…uh, I don't eat meat," she felt to remind him.
Her observation made a nervous smile grow on Grissom's face. "Yeah, I know that, Sara. But...I'm sure you know other kinds of food can be cooked on a barbecue, like vegetables, cheese…even some other vegetarian things, I suppose…"
Sara smiled while noticing that Grissom's voice had acquired an academic tone, even for talking about a barbecue. "Ok," she agreed. Something had the time to enlighten in Grissom's eyes before she went on, curiosity and thoughtfulness mixed in her voice. "But, I'm sorry…I don't mean to be fussy, or make you think that I'm not interested in what you're saying, I'm…uh, I'm very interested in what we're talking about, and…yeah, I like the idea of a barbecue, but…you see...hat, heavy jacket? We're well into Autumn, so I don't know -
"That's why I haven't picked a day, already," Grissom clarified. He appeared regretful, but as soon as he finished speaking a strange light suddenly sparkled in his eyes, and the continuation arrived more serenely. "However, since you seem to like the idea of a barbecue, I might have a solution."
That said, he pushed the START button on the panel, and Sara – who knew him well – realized that his might was just a trifle: everything was already clear in his mind.
"And…would you mind sharing that solution with me?" she asked, revealing her impatience.
"I still have to verify some details. I'll let you know when I'm sure," he shortly replied, like caught by some kind of fever.
"I get it," Sara commented with a sigh of frustration when the elevator's door opened on the parking garage. "I have to wait for the aforementioned three years…" She threw him a happily threatening look and walked out.
Grissom stood still, watching her walk away. He then took a general look around. "Three weeks would sound better?" he asked, with a louder volume of voice to be sure that Sara could hear him.
She stopped, and when she turned around, a beautiful happy smile was standing out on her face. "Definitely," she replied decisively.
Grissom looked satisfied, but didn't say anything further and didn't move from inside the elevator. So Sara greeted him with a nod and walked away.
*
A dozen days later, Sara and Greg arrived at Grissom's office after inspecting a crime scene. They dutifully reported the developments on the investigation and, upon agreeing with Grissom on how to proceed, they headed to the door. Just before Sara could put a foot out of the office, though, Grissom called her. She stopped at the threshold expecting further directions, but he made a sign to come closer again. Some uncertainty in his look made her understand that he wanted to talk with her alone , so she told Greg she would meet him in a minute and approached Grissom's desk with her mind still focused on the way to unearth how Linda Western had hidden her son's body.
When she arrived in front of Grissom’s desk, her boss moved his lips as to say something, but just before uttering anything, as though caught by a change of mind, he made her sign to sit.
"What's up?" Sara encouraged him once sat.
She really needed not to lose the inspiration on the case and, as much as she liked Grissom's company, she hoped his speech – whatever he had to tell her – was short, so she could go back to work.
"The barbecue," Grissom said all of a sudden in a rather rigid way and with the delicacy of a watering hole waiter.
For some moments, Sara didn't say anything. She was caught by surprise that Grissom mentioned the barbecue, but that word didn't mean anything if left there by itself. So Sara just waited – to recover from the surprise, and expecting Grissom to say what he wanted to say. His prolonged silence and the doubtful expression on his face, though, made her start to feel uncertain about Grissom's intentions, and also resigned, even, to the idea that he had changed his mind about having a barbecue together.
Grissom, in turn, expecting some kind of reaction from Sara which wasn't coming, felt uncertain. "You…uh, is it still ok for you to have a barbecue?" he asked with a more gentle and polite tone.
"Yeah," she replied without hesitation.
Her answer relieved Grissom. He had to lower his look at the papers that populated his desk to hide the joyful feeling that had tickled his heart, while his intertwined fingers lying on the plane tightened stronger. He threw a look at the door before continuing. "Good. So, if you don't have other plans, we could do it next week, on Sunday?"
"No problem."
"OK. We meet at my apartment, and then we go."
"We go? Where?"
"That's not important at the moment. Wear warm clothes and bring a change with you."
The required change made Sara curious, but she knew Grissom would not explain. "Can I contribute in any way?" she asked.
Grissom gratefully welcomed her proposal. "About that, I wanted to ask you to take care of the vegetarian things…" he said, hesitant.
"Vegetarian things?"
"I'll take care of vegetables and cheese, and…all the rest, but I believe your knowledge of the vegetarian food that can be cooked on a barbecue is wider than mine. I’m pretty sure I won't have time to deepen my knowledge in that field before Sunday."
"Got it. Sure, I'll take care of the vegetarian things myself."
Then their chat stopped abruptly. Both of them were perplexed by the way their – useless to call it otherwise – first date had been set and, most of all, that it had been set for real.
Short and useless words followed, and in a wink of the eye, Sara was at work again.