Title: Acceptance
Authot: gij
Oairing: Catherine/Sara & Sara/Gil
Rating: This one would be an R, people. Children, please leave the immediate area.
Author's Notes: Thanks to Mel for looking this over originally, and big thanks to Amber for helping with this part. My love and affection to you both.
Dedication: Ah, um, err, I don't know. To the people I love, you know who you are.
Note: Part III of the Emergence Trilogy.

You dream about her often. You dream you wake up, early morning when you’ve both just got off shift, and she’s standing in your bedroom door.

You blink sleepily, and before you can move, she’s on the bed with you. She straddles your waist, laughing, and leans down to kiss you. When you reach up to touch her, she laughs again and catches a wrist in each hand, holds them prisoner against the bed.

You squirm against her, and you manage to get a hand away from her. The blankets pull away from where they loosely cover you as you manage to grab her and roll her onto the bed, moving to lie on top of her.

She tries to escape, get away as you just did, and you can feel her long legs move against the inside of your bare thighs. You hold her gently, and your palms slide over her smooth stomach, feel the tiny bump of each rib.

That image, the physical contact, is enough to wake you up every time. You jolt awake, sweat marking your white sheets.

With the amount of time you spend together, you reason, it’s hardly unexpected that you dream about her. It seems Grissom has some sort of controlling plan – not only will he not work around her, but he will rarely assign one of the men to work with her either.

Perhaps it’s some unconscious sign of jealousy, perhaps he feels safer working where she won’t watch him and you won’t question them both. You suspect he’s seen you watch them both, and is preparing to block off your interest, your investigation.

You couldn’t care less for his reasoning, of course, and you don’t even want to confront him about his feelings for her. You simply don’t want to know, don’t want to know what words were offered, what whispers suggested. You don’t want to know anything about them for the simple reason that you want her for yourself.

Sometimes you find her watching you with your own speculative look, and you wonder if the feeling is all one sided. You’d be tempted to drop a casual hint as to a temporary partner, just to see how she would react, but you’d never hurt her that way. You’d never damage your own chances for something as petty.

But she stands up from investigating the twisted ruins of a car wreck, and her eyes go to you immediately. You feel the gaze where you’re interviewing witnesses twenty metres away, and your eyes meet. Curiosity, confusion, and intensity.

It’s not always like that, of course. She seems more vulnerable, and there are certain topics which are definitely off limits. You try to work around them. You would try to work around her, but that’s an impossibility. Faked indifference was never your strong point.

So when you find her quietly crying behind her car at the end of the shift, after finding that a young girl drowned for no more reason than the carelessness of her parents, you could no more walk away than you could lift up the Tahoe. Not on a cold day in hell.

So you wrap arms around her waist and pet her hair, wipe away her tears with the edge of your sleeve. You’ll never wash this shirt again, never. She raises her eyes to yours and there’s pain and anger and some silent form of comprehension.

You think you understand her, maybe. You think she’s starting to understand you.

In any case, you work closer together than ever. She smiles at you when no one is watching and while it terrifies you, you also love it. You bump together casually while getting your field kits out of her Tahoe and your heart beats faster, you can’t help it.

She finds evidence, blood drops on the pavement, and you follow her as she tracks them, place markers beside them and photograph them. She stays a few steps ahead, flashing her torch around, nearly blinding you when she turns back to ask you something.

The trail ends abruptly, leading up to the sidewalk curb and disappearing. You guess that whatever it was disappeared into a car at this stage. She flashes the light over the street several times, then agrees with you.

You walk back to the main scene together, and she kneels to inspect something. You’re packing up your kit, hoping you’re done here, and she calls to you.

You wander over and place a hand on her shoulder for balance, brushing her hair to the side absent-mindedly as you do so.

She looks up at you immediately, looks from your eyes to your hand and back again. You start to blush and begin to withdraw your hand, suddenly sure she can see the images flashing through your mind… at a crime scene no less.

She watches with huge eyes as you pull your hand back, then meets your eyes again. Without looking down, she takes your hand with one of hers and tugs you down to see what she’s looking at.

She points out a white residue on the concrete. You’re dubious, it could be anything and not even vaguely related to the case. Still, she lets go of your hand long enough to scrape up a sample, and you remember suddenly what it’s like to be alone.

Even here, with her just inches away, the loss of contact is almost painful. You stand up and start to go back to the car.

She calls your name and chases you to the back door of the Tahoe, stows her gear alongside yours. She slams the door and looks at you for the longest moment of your life.

You stare back, and you’re sure she can read your mind, and you don’t know if you feel more thrilled or shamed for that thought. You break her gaze and move around towards the passenger side.

You’re out of sight to the majority of the world here, and she’s on you in a flash. Before you can begin to comprehend the first movement, she’s grabbed you, spun you, and pinned you against the side of the car with her body.

She’s impatient, and she bites your lower lip gently when you don’t open to her immediately. You’re amazed that the shock doesn’t have your bottom jaw hanging open, your lips part even as you think it. She’s past your lips and teeth before you can think about it, tongue claiming your mouth.

You kiss her back with just as much intensity, rubbing tongues together in a way that swiftly makes you feel mindless. Your hands aren’t idle, they slide around her and up over her back, come to rest on her shoulder blades. You revel in your ability to pull her even closer and do so.

She breaks away suddenly and you can only conclude that you’ve moved too fast, you’ve scared her somehow. You drop your hands and she looks at you again, her dark eyes bordering on absolutely wild. She still has a grip on your upper arm as she yanks the car door open and all but tosses you onto the backseat.

She crawls in after you, tugging the door closed with a foot as she moves cautiously over you. You lie as still as possible and stare up at her, how amazing she looks right now. Her hair is in her face and scarcely more than moonlight angles off her face, making her look ethereal and incredibly real all at once.

She’s somehow both black and white and sparkly all in the same moment, and you recognise this feeling.

 

 

 

 

She hasn’t touched you yet, and you toss your head, grab for her shoulders, her hair, her hands, anything you can touch and love and try to own. She drives you near crazy with her half-there appearance. You can only see her when the moon light touches her, but she’s insanely beautiful when it does so.

She ducks down over you and kisses the side of your neck, working her way over and around your collarbone. You moan and one of your hands clutches around her neck, the other reaches for her waist.

She leans back again and manages to pry your hands from her, holding a wrist in each hand. She holds them together as she leans to kiss you again, and you laugh and struggle against her, raining kisses on her face as you do so. She noses against your cheek and you smile again, manage to get your hands free. She straddles you as you do so, trying to hold you in place.

You slide your hands down her stomach, then up under the edge of her shirt. You watch her face the whole time you do this, waiting, almost expecting her to say no.

She doesn’t, and you can feel her skin slide under your palms, every inch of it as soft as you’d dreamed. Your fingers bump over the ridges of her ribs as you trail higher, then move to the sides to tug the shirt off.

She watches you all while you do it, and she never stops you. You drop the shirt to the side and return to her. Your hands trace her sides and she laughs a little as you find a ticklish spot. Without waiting another second, you draw her down and kiss her again.

Later, you draw carefully apart and solemnly dress each other, carefully refraining from any overtly sensual touching. As insane as it seems, you’re still on the clock, so you move in and carefully button her shirt, leaving the top open as she always does. You straighten her necklace and she looks at you critically and smooths down your hair.

She climbs through the opening between the front seats and settles herself in the passenger seat as you watch admiringly. You want to touch her again, but for now, you won’t.

An endless shift later, you communicate with your eyes in the break room and wordlessly get up to pull on your jackets.

You gesture to the results you’ve both been studying. "I’ll take these in to Grissom, meet you in the car."

She looks ready to agree, then her eyes abruptly refocus past your shoulder. "No need." She says coldly, and if you hadn’t seen that shift in perception, your heart would have cracked from her tone.

Instead you turn and see Grissom in the doorway, an unreadable gaze fixed on Sara. He moves silently into the room.

"Catherine, would you excuse us?" he requests, but his voice isn’t asking a question.

You raise an eyebrow, but before you can comment, Sara beats you to it. "You can stay." She tells you, carelessly dismissing Grissom’s request without a second thought.

Grissom gives you a long stare, and you can feel his resentment as you shrug and casually lean back on the table. You flash him the beginnings of a smile and his scowl deepens.

"Perhaps this conversation can wait." He allows grudgingly. You would smile at the concession that isn’t a concession, but the conversation referred to is not a matter for amusement. You turn unwillingly pleading eyes on Sara.

She glances at him, at you, then makes her decision. "No, it can’t." she decides. Grissom’s look is of surprise, you’re sure your own is no different.

"Sara…" he murmurs, and there’s an edge of guilt there.

"We’re not having this conversation. Ever." Sara overrules him. "It’s over, and everyone knows it."

She looks past his shock, and glances to you. You understand the silent message, and as she walks out, you smile before following her.

 

End