By the Dashboard Light
"Grissom?" Catherine poked her head in the door. "You're needed in the break room." She disappeared before he could muster a glare at her.
He hated his birthday. People always feel compelled to be nice to you on your birthday, to buy sugary cake and sing off-key. They buy useless gifts and make stupid jokes about old age - jokes he didn't want to hear, not on the day he turned fifty.
Heaving a sigh, Grissom got to his feet and shuffled down the hallway. It'd been a quiet night, with no new cases. Just paperwork and cups of coffee, and watching Sara pace past his door.
When he was five, he'd watched his mother from afar, studying her as he collected insect specimens. Now he'd been around half a century, and he still collected insects, still eyed a woman from afar. The child is father to the man.
He blinked in surprise as he arrived at the break room. Only his friends were gathered around the table - no Ecklie, no Sofia, no Hodges. There was no cake, just a giant platter of calamari and a handful of paper plates. No one sang. They just looked up, waved, and kept chewing. A small smile tugged on the corner of his lips as he sat down and served himself. Maybe they knew him after all.
"Quiet tonight," he observed, not knowing if he was referring to the lab or to the subdued group around him.
"We've got a wager going as to what the first case that rolls in will be," Nick told him. "Other than that, we're bored out of our minds."
Greg nodded, yawning. "Any big plans for today, Griss?"
"Nope," he replied. "Work and sleep. The usual."
Sara's eyes were wide as she watched him. She wasn't eating the calamari. Was it because she didn't eat fish, or was she just not hungry?
"Here," Warrick said, handing him a wrapped gift. "We all chipped in."
It was probably a mounted insect of some sort. A butterfly, or a grasshopper. You know Grissom, he likes his bugs.
Grissom unwrapped it and caught his breath. It was a framed photo of all of them, taken at the holiday party. A simple black frame, boxing in an image of every single one of his friends, caught in a moment of simple pleasure. You know Grissom.
"Thanks, guys," he said with a real smile. "This may be the nicest present I've ever gotten."
"Yeah, well, you never had Eddie for a husband," Catherine said, opening a can of soda.
"Um, true, I guess."
"Every time he screwed up, I'd get jewelry." She held up her wrist to show them her gold bracelet. "This is the best thing I got out of that relationship."
Nick frowned. "Uh, what about Lindsey?"
"Oh. Right. Her too."
They turned to look at Brass as he pulled out his beeping pager. "Looks like I may have something for you," he said to Grissom. They both got up and walked to the other side of the room while Brass made the call.
"I'm surprised you'd keep the gifts Eddie gave you," Nick said to Catherine quietly. "If someone hurt me like that, I'd probably pitch anything that reminded me of her."
"Ah, but he was my first love," she sighed. "Didn't you keep the things your first love gave you?"
"Yeah, I did," he admitted. "On my sixteenth birthday, Melanie gave me a gold watch. It stopped working years ago, but I saved it."
Grissom stood next to Brass, pretending to listen to the captain's phone call while he eavesdropped on the team's conversation. He didn't get it. How were they all able to speak so easily about past loves, without sweating and stammering?
"My girlfriend in college gave me a mix tape," Greg said, leaning his chin on his hand. "I played it so much it doesn't even work anymore, but I still have it." He turned to Sara. "What about you?"
She looked alarmed. "What about me?"
"Did you keep something from your first love?"
"Yeah," Sara said, blushing. "Just a sentimental kind of gift."
"What was it?"
"A die." Sara looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and do just that.
Nick frowned. "A who-what?"
"A die. The singular form of dice," Warrick supplied. "Sounds like something a high school guy would give."
She smirked. "Actually, I was in grad school at the time."
"Grad school?" Catherine's eyebrows shot up. "At Berkeley? Maybe Grissom knew him when he was teaching there. You have a photo?"
"Grissom didn't teach this guy," Sara said simply. "I don't think he'd recognize him."
Brass hung up the phone, earning him Grissom's attention. "Body in the desert. You game?"
Grissom nodded. "I'll take Sara."
August in Las Vegas is oppressively hot, even at night. They drove in silence, the space between them thick with unanswered questions that even the air conditioner couldn't cool. Grissom drove, his fingers splayed across the steering wheel, and she wondered what they'd feel like against the surface of her skin.
They'd driven for an hour when a sudden, loud bang sounded from outside. Sara jumped in her seat, looking at Grissom in alarm. "What was that?"
He didn't need to respond, as the telltale thudding of a flat tire shook the Denali. He pulled to the side of the road and sighed. "I'll get the spare."
She nodded and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. They popped open moments later as Grissom climbed back into the driver's seat. "No spare," he grumbled, dialing Brass on his cell and giving him their location.
Sara redirected the air flow of one of the vents. "At least we can run the AC," she sighed. "Otherwise we'd probably broil out here."
He nodded. Silence descended again. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it abruptly, then opened it again. "You were wrong, you know."
"That we'd broil?"
"That I wouldn't recognize that guy from Berkeley."
Sara turned away from him, annoyed that he'd overheard her conversation. "Yeah, well. I'm not sure I'd recognize him if I saw him today. Why would you?"
"Because I wish I could be him."
She whipped her head back, ready to lash out, but the earnest look on his face startled her. "What's stopping you?"
Grissom didn't answer. He was thinking about fifty birthday candles, and how lighting them might set off a smoke alarm.
The dashboard light illuminated his face, and she could see his eyes squint in curiosity as she pulled out her wallet. She unzipped the pocket and reached in, plucking out a tiny green die.
"You still have it." It wasn't a question, so she didn't answer him. She just held it in her palm, her gaze soft with memory.
He pulled out his own wallet, unzipping the pocket and dropping a matching die onto his palm. "How did you know it meant something to me?"
"I didn't," she replied. "I just knew it meant something to me ."
"My father gave them to me," Grissom whispered. "I was five, and I came home from Sunday School talking about Heaven and the Garden of Eden. My dad, who was an atheist, reached into a drawer and pulled these out. He gave them to me and told me it was the closest I'd ever come to having paradise."
She furrowed her brows. "I don't-"
"Pair o' dice," he supplied, and she rolled her eyes.
"So if he'd pulled out two dimes, you'd have paradigms?"
"And if you'd gotten your PhD, we'd be a paradox," Grissom smirked.
Sara smiled faintly, then looked down, staring at the dice. "Why'd you give me one?"
The air was too heavy to breathe, thick as warm tar. "It's stupid."
"Tell me."
"You know why."
And she did. "Because," she said slowly, a lopsided grin threatening to emerge. "When we're together it's paradise, and when we're apart we die."
"Told you it was stupid." Her smile could stop his heart mid-beat, as quickly as it had back at Berkeley.
He'd loved her that last day on the pier, riding the ferris wheel for hours, talking about death and decay while the wind whipped her hair around her face and breathed life into his lungs. He'd wanted to kiss her, to lean close to her ear and whisper about the future and her beauty and how every time she talked about physics his knees wobbled. But he'd shaken her hand firmly, then pressed a tiny green die into her palm. Then he'd walked away. Or that's what he'd told himself.
"Griss? What are you thinking?"
He shook his head slowly, blinking the past away. "You know. the funny thing about roller coasters is that the climb is all about anticipation. The real fun begins after you've made it past the crest and you're plunging into the unknown. Your stomach drops, and it feels like pure adrenaline is shooting through your veins."
"So you're saying that the best part comes when you're over the hill?"
She always did have a way of understanding him.
Slowly, Grissom reached up, running a knuckle down the side of her cheek. He felt his heart quiver unbearably until he slid his hand around to cup the back of her neck in his palm. His gaze fell upon his other hand, still holding the green die. Dropping the die next to hers, he turned back to look into her eyes, just inches away. They were both breathing shallowly, and he had to wonder whether they were just sharing the same air over and over between them.
"Tell me, Sara. what's it like holding paradise in the palm of your hand?"
Her fist tightened protectively around the tiny dice as his grip tightened on the back of her neck. She glanced at his mouth tentatively. "Kind of. perfect."
He cocked his head in agreement, pulling her forward until their lips met once, then twice, then three times, then fifty. After a while, they both lost count.