Part A

--

She closes the Lester file and
leans back on the black chair
in the break room, all alone.

                Maybe she should stop by Grissom’s
                office.

                         Maybe he has already gone home.

Maybe he doesn’t want to see her.

Maybe he’s nervous.

Maybe she’s nervous.

Maybe she’s tired of all the maybes.

She really doesn’t want to talk,
because who knows what kinds
of demons will show themselves?

Love, something that brings such
pleasure with such pain; it
wrecks havoc with her head.

She arrives home eventually,
and pulls on comfy grey sweats
and a camisole. She’s trying to
lose herself in a crossword puzzle,
pen in hand when the doorbell
buzzes.

“Come in,” she says, filling in
nineteen across.
Smother.
He enters her apartment, tired
eyes and car keys in hand but looking
incredibly good for a man just off his
second shift.

She unconsciously sticks the top
of the pen into her mouth,
making perfect little marks
into black plastic.

It is a bad habit she (thought she) had
broken after coming to Vegas, along
with puffing cancer sticks.

                  “Hey,” he says softly, making her heart
                  palpitate for no apparent reason.

“Hey,” she says, pulling the pen
from her mouth and wiping it
across her shirt, watching him
cross her parquet floors.

Her eyes are trained on him, his
shoulders, his eyes, his stride,
his mouth, and she sighs inwardly.

Some habits are harder to break
than others.

He sits next to her, seemingly
at aloss for words.

                  “Sara,” he speaks,

and the way he says her name,
like it’s a blessing and a curse.
It never – from the first coffee they’d
shared together in San Francisco till
right this very second – fails to make her
want to walk away and kiss him hard at
the same time.

She resists the urge to bite the pen
again, choosing to speak instead.

“It’s okay.”

A flash of something highlights
his features and she bites her
lip and winces inwardly.

“Stop it, Sara.”

She feigns surprise.

“What?”

                 “This,” he says, gesturing
                 to the space between them.
                 “Stop letting me off the hook.”

“I’m…I’m not.”

                   He leans in closer to her.
                   “Then what is it?”

“I just don’t like
confrontations.”

It’s not the whole truth,
but it’s a tiny piece of
the messy, complicated
puzzle of her life.

His eyes soften and the
realisation dawns in
his eyes.

                   “I will never disagree with
                   you with my hands, Sara.”

“I know,” she
says, but
she doesn’t tell

him

that

was

what

he

always

said.

--

It doesn’t feel right, but
the urge to tell him she
loves him hits her in the most
unexpected places:

a dark living room with fingerprint powder
hanging in the air;

in a park with 100 watt spotlights beaming
over a decomposing body;

in the morgue, where glassy-eyed victims
stare, where her breaths are almost
visible in the cool air. 

She imagines it’s because she had fallen
in love with Lecturer Grissom first,
where hypothetical crime scenes
and entomological timelines were what
defined him.                                                              
                                                                                                                Lecturer Grissom,
whose blue eyes and bright mind
sealed the deal.                   

After that she fell in love with
Supervisor Grissom, along with
his dark eyes and hermit-like tendencies;
his latex gloves and
Red Creeper print powder.

Supervisor Grissom,

with his push-pull game of attraction
that drove her to the very edge and
back.   

It’s only been months since she has
fallen in love with Gil Grissom, the man who
takes her to secluded restaurants
where he speaks his mind.

Hardly anything Gil
says needs to be analysed,
unlike the words of Supervisor Grissom,
in terms of their relationship. 

                                                                                                                 Gil Grissom,

who undresses her with warm hands and
steamy kisses. The same man who has
perfected the art of making her scream
his name into darkened rooms,
making her feel very close to
feeling whole at the same time.

She doesn’t know how much longer she
can keep those three words from spilling
out, along with the bottled-up ghosts,
now that Grissom, Gil,

   is everywhere.

--

It's long after the case,
long after the incident,
but the scene still haunts
her.

"All right then.
This was a really bad idea.
I'm sorry."

Sofia, with her wild
eyes and unkempt
blonde hair.

Sofia and Laura
have the same wild eyes,
the same kind of desperation
that wells up inside of them,
the kind that shows through
their eyes.

The eternal stain
of crimson on their
hands, the guilt.

 

It makes her think about
the company Sofia keeps
(or will keep after this),
the kind of company that never
quite leaves you alone for very long.

 

And then there’s
Grissom.

 

The way he looked at
Sofia, with concern and
maybe even a little
discomfort.

It makes her fear
how he’ll look at her
when he finds out she
keeps worse company
in her head than Sofia,
even if they don’t
show in her eyes.

 Yet.

--

She knows who Heather is
and what she deals with
in her business:
latex, domination and pain.

It baffles her, but at least it
shows that there are people
who are, believe it or not,
more haunted than herself.

Before she comes to this realisation
though, Grissom loans her to
the struggling Swing shift on a
dusty Tuesday evening and
she hands over Zoe Kessler’s
file to Greg.

Six hours later, she re-enters the
lab and heads for the locker room,
sweaty and smelling of disinfectant.

“Hey!”

It’s Greg, looking entirely too
chirpy for a person going into his
third shift.

“How was your case?”

She thinks about it for a second.

Messy. Yours?

He gives her a wide-eyed
look.

“Better than primetime.”

Yeah?

“Oh yeah.
A crazy guy trying to
be the next Hitler
and Lady Heather.”

Something slips from her
fingers and hits the cool tiles,
with a ping.

Lady Heather?

“She is Zoe Kessler’s
mother.”

Oh.

“Grissom’s still at the crime
scene. Or so they say,”
he says with a wink, and his
pager beeps.

Catch you later, he mouths
as he leaves her alone in the
darkness.

Heather and Grissom.

Grissom…with Heather?

She bends down to pick
the fallen object: 
Grissom's apartment key.

She curses herself for the
hundredth time for leaving her
only key at his place, and has
no choice but to stop over.

He values professionalism too much.

On her way out, she decides to
risk a shower and tries to wash
the disinfectant from her previous
case along with newfound knowledge
from the surface of her skin with
almost scalding water.

Then again, it’s Heather.

And he’s human.

She steps out, pink from the heat,
dresses in record time but before
she reaches the doorknob, it swings
open.  

“Sara.”

His tone betrays surprise, and his
clothes, muddy and wrinkled, betray…
what?

Heather.

“She was going to kill him.”

What do you mean?

“She had the suspect tied to
his car, and she was lashing
him with a leather whip.”

She arches an eyebrow, and
she wonders what kind of company
Heather keeps. Maybe they could start
up a group, Ghosts and Demons
Anonymous.

Sofia could join, if she asks
really nicely.

“She was going to kill him,
right in front of my eyes,”

Grissom says, bringing her
mind back to the conversation.

So you saved her?

Surprisingly, there is no bitterness
in her voice, no anger.
It’s cool and detached. 

“No,” he says evenly,
“I saved him.”

She’s silent, and he elaborates.

“There are just some people who
can’t be saved, Sara.”

A shiver runs down her spine
but on the outside she doesn’t
bat an eyelid.

“Nothing happened between us.”

She believes him,
but Jealous Sara wants to scream
and rage and hit.
She just inhales deeply
and bites her lip.

His comment still resonates,
and she pushes it away, not
too deep though, because too
deep and they’ll fester into new
ghosts.

It’s okay,

she says finally,
and tastes blood.

-- 

It’s not really okay,
but what’s another lie,
                                                             another ghost?

Love is strange,
anyway.

It allows her mother to
endure broken arms
and deep bruises.

It allows her to trade clam chowder
and salty air for neon castles and
parched deserts. 

It allows her mother to take
a knife to her father. 

It allows him to spill his heart
to a murderer.

It’s a mixture of hurt, endurance,
sacrifice, understanding and
passion.

It allows her to
forgive him.

But it perplexes
her, because it
seems nothing
good                                                   is born
from love.

--

She lies in bed,
wonderfully warm after
he shows her, with his
hands and hips, what
he was thinking about
at the lab.

“What is your fantasy?”

he mouths on glistening
skin and she trembles.

“My parents taught me
not to dream. Dreams
get hopes high and
expectations short.”

“You’re saying you’ve
never dreamed?”

She looks at him, and
for the millionth time,
feels herself sink; almost
drown in blue.

It’s the blue of her few
childhood memories
by the beach,
the blue of her pen at the
Forensic Academy Conference,
the blue of the sheets they
made love on for the first time.

“Once.”

His lips brush against her collarbone
and lower.

“And?”

“I dreamed of the perfect blue,”
she breathes. “What’s yours?”

He stops short of her navel
and brings his head up to
meet her eyes.

“Don’t get angry.”

“It depends,” she says
softly, and he lets the
words linger in the air
before he speaks.

“I want to save you.”

She bristles instantly
and pulls herself up. 

“Who ever said I need
‘saving’?” she asks,
shaking. 

“No one. But there are times…
times where I wish you would
let me in. I want to know the
things you carry in your head,
Sara.”

She shakes her head, pulling
the blanket tighter around her.

“No, you don’t.”

He reaches for her wrist,
feeling life pulse under
translucent skin.

“I love you.”

Brown eyes stare back, wide:
it’s the first time either one of
them has admitted it.

It’s no cause for celebration,
because in her mind, a faded ghost
plays her most feared memory.

“That’s the problem.”

--

Part C