Wherefore

Chapter 16

This is not how I expected to wake up.

I'd always figured that when it came to sharing a bed, Grissom would be one of two types of sleepers. The first possibility was that he would turn away from me in his sleep, perched far over on his side of the bed. The second was that he'd have me wrapped up tight in his embrace, spooning me from behind.

Instead, when I open my eyes we're still side-by-side, still holding hands. His palm is sweaty and his grip is tight, and when I tilt my gaze up to his face, I notice that he's looking back at me.

"Good morning." His voice is thick with the remnants of sleep, and my own throat grows tight at the thought that there might be more mornings like this in our future.

"Hey. How long have you been awake?"

He shrugs. "A while. I napped yesterday, so-"

"Right." I stretch my free arm out, arching my spine and sighing heavily. "How long was I out?"

"Seven hours or so. You needed it."

"Mm." My eyelids slowly start to droop again, until I notice how hot and sticky the pillow feels under my cheek. Now I'm definitely awake. "Oh god. How bad does it look?"

"You're a very pretty woman, Sara."

"Grissom."

"A natural beauty, really."

"Grissom."

"It's horrifying, you look horrifying," he groans, letting go of my hand to rub his beard with both palms. "I'm shaving today."

"No you're not."

"Then I'm shellacking the beard. I refuse to shred your face again."

Raising myself up on my elbows, I lean over and carefully place a soft kiss on his lips. "Eventually I'll build up a callous."

"She'll hug you again when she sees you," he warns me as we make our way down the sidewalk toward Delmonico's. "And again when we leave. And probably a few times in between."

The pedestrian traffic all seems to be heading towards us, and it's only with a little fancy footwork that I avoid being plowed down by a baby stroller. "So she's a hugger."

"It's not just Amy. Deaf people hug more than hearing people. It's a cultural thing."

"I guess you never absorbed that part, because you don't," I venture, glancing at him as we round the corner.

He looks surprised. "I do, too."

"Grissom, until recently, all you've ever done is hold my hand."

"Ah," he nods. "Again, cultural."

"What?"

He pauses for a moment by the side of a building, and the crowds pour by us. "Which seems more intimate to you - hugging, or kissing?"

Not sure of where he's going with this, I narrow my eyes. "You know kissing is more intimate."

"And why is that?"

"It just is," I reply. "Kissing... indicates a certain level of purpose. If you spend an hour kissing, you can't really do anything else."

His eyebrows waggle salaciously.

"Nothing on the first date, anyway," I add quickly, my cheeks flushing. "My point is , you can't exactly have a deep conversation if your lips are locked."

He reaches out and grabs my hand, entwining our fingers. "So, keeping that in mind, which action do you think would be more intimate to a deaf person - a brief hug, or several minutes of holding hands?"

Right.

"I feel like I have so much to learn," I groan, dropping my head. "I wanted to try to memorize the words for everything on the menu so I could translate what she wanted to order. I should have at least learned that by now."

"Sara." He pulls me closer to the building. "Show me the sign for 'Hello.' Then 'Nice to see you again,' and then 'How are you?'"

Sighing, I acquiesce.

"Good," he nods. "Just make sure you raise your eyebrows when asking how she is, because that indicates it's a question."

"Okay."

"And don't worry about impressing Amy. She loved you before she even met you."

My phone rings just as we catch sight of the restaurant. Grissom checks his watch and motions that he's going inside as I flip open my cell.

"Hello?"

"Okay, I've got the winner, right here."

I grin, ducking out of the stream of pedestrians. "Hello to you too, Greg. Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"Pulling a double is all in a day's work for a dedicated CSI like myself," he says breezily. "Seriously, though, I've got the winner. You ready to have your socks knocked off?"

"Tightening my shoelaces as we speak," I retort. "You've got nothing, Sanders." For the past year or so, Greg and I have had a mock battle going to see who can come up with the weirdest case. I've been the reigning champ, of course, having several more years' experience under my belt. Doesn't stop him from trying, though.

"Picture this," he says, and I imagine his chest puffing out as he speaks. "Just after midnight, we get a frantic call from a single mother saying her ten-year-old daughter didn't come home from school that day."

"Why'd she wait till-"

"Patience, my little chickadee. So I head over, solo..."

"Solo?"

"You know it. Had nothing at all to do with the fact that Cath and Sofia were out on solo cases, either. Anyway, so I head over, solo, to check things out. Give it the old Sanders survey. The old Scandinavian scrutiny. The old-"

"Greg."

"Right. So I get there and things seem somewhat kosher. Kid's bedroom looks undisturbed, her backpack's missing, you know the drill. So I'm looking around the house and I'm pretty hungry at this point-"

"Hey Greg, I'm late to meet someone for lunch, so if you could give me the Cliff's Notes version of this-"

"Kid heard that blood feeds your brain cells. So rather than studying for her science test, she decided to get as much blood to her brain as possible. Climbed headfirst down the chimney, partially opened an umbrella to keep her from slipping, and stayed there. Eventually passed out."

"How'd you find her?"

"She brought her rat terrier with her for company and he started howling."

I'm silent for a long moment and finally mutter, "Okay, you might be winning now." I snap my phone closed as quickly as possible, but not before Greg lets out a whoop of victory.

Delmonico's is one of those old Italian restaurants where the smell of tomatoes and oregano hangs in the air, thick as fog. Grissom's waving to me from the back of the place, and as I make my way over to the table, Amy's already standing up to hug me. The second we pull apart, her smile fades. She turns furiously and signs something to Grissom.

"What'd she say?"

His shoulders slump. "She wants me to shave my beard."

"No way," I say emphatically when she looks back at me, and she sighs, patting my red cheek with sympathy.

I'd expected Amy to spend the meal talking about Grissom, but instead she grills me for details on my own life. From baskets of freshly baked bread through my eggplant parmigiana, I'm terribly tense, waiting for the inevitable questions about my family to arise. But after the tiramisu arrives and she's covered my schooling, my work, and my friends, I realize that Grissom must have told her that family questions are off-limits.

"How long till my next visit, Sara?" she writes on her notepad, staring at me pointedly, and I can't help but love her a little.

"Soon."

"And you can come visit us, too," Grissom adds.

Us. It has a nice ring to it.

Amy scurries off right before the bill arrives. I try to see how much I owe, but Grissom grabs the slip of paper before I get a good look.

"I've got this," he says, thumbing through his wallet for a credit card.

"I have money," I tell him feebly. He just ignores me. Being a woman in the dating world may be easy on the checkbook, but it's hard on the feminist pride.

The waiter sets down a tray of mints just as Amy reappears. She hands Grissom a grocery bag, then turns to me.

"Thank you for indulging an old woman," she writes on her pad. "I'm so happy to have met you, Sara." We share a hug, then she turns to Grissom and hugs him for a long time. When they pull apart, she signs something to him, then turns, squeezes my hand, and leaves.

We watch her go, and when I look over at Grissom, he seems a little sad.

"What's in the bag?"

He looks in and smiles. "Bottle of beard conditioner."

We spend the evening in his hotel room again, so that I can ice my face in anticipation for tomorrow morning's memorial service. If Grissom's mother hated me before, I can only imagine what she'll think of me now.

"Stop thinking about it," he says, turning the channel to an old episode of The X-Files. "Tomorrow will be fine."

"Maybe I'll wear heavy foundation, to help cover the redness. There's a bottle in my cosmetics bag - it's old, but it'd do the trick."

"I can't imagine your skin would feel good under that gunk. And wouldn't it slow the healing process?"

I could try explaining to him that sometimes women have to put beauty before comfort, but I rarely buy into that notion, so it's better that he not know. "It would only be for a few hours."

"I guess."

He's not really watching the episode, I notice. He keeps flipping his phone open and closed.

"Has she sent you any more text messages?"

Grissom doesn't ask who. "A few."

"What's she saying?"

His face is set in a practiced expression of indifference. "Same thing she says every time I don't do what she wants."

"Which is?"

He stares at the TV screen for a long time, watching Fox Mulder cling to a runaway RV. Just when I think he's not going to respond, he murmurs, "She says my father would be ashamed of the man I've become."

I don't have a response for that. I'm not sure there is a response for that.

This time, he doesn't have to ask me to spend the night. When he turns out the light, I reach out to hold him. He nestles his head under my chin and is silent.

He doesn't cry, but I do.