Land on the left, water on the right. White froth rises through his toes as he walks the foamy interface. Warm Gulf water, it tickles, and it feels good after living for years in the artificial oasis of Vegas.

He bends to pick up a piece of driftwood and throws it far into the water. He doesn’t know why, but the force and motion feel good.

He has been walking for at least forty five minutes. He checked into the hotel at three and it is now approaching five. He knows that the opening seminar will start soon.

He turns away from the water and heads back to the hotel. He sits at a bench and rolls his jeans back down, slips into his shoes. Then he sits there for as long as he can, postponing the inevitable.

His hearing is a bit cloudy so it is easy to imagine he is separate from the world, clad in cottony distance. The illusion is comforting, convenient, and ultimately it has not helped his personality any.

He knows deep down that this will hurt, that he will have to confront the consequences of his actions. His eyes are blue as the overcast sky, inscrutable as the line between sky and sea. He stands, and heads inside.

.

He takes a seat in the back and discreetly turns his hearing aid up. He looks nervously around, heart pounding, and he wonders why this is so upsetting to him.

Forensic scientists are generally a shaggy, disheveled lot, and this conference is no different. There is a definite preponderance of jeans and tee shirts.

The Feds, however, are different. When he sees Sara Sidle enter the room in a pale blue suit, its tailored curves hugging her body, her hair long and curling around her face, he wonders why it physically hurts to look at her.

She is in an animated discussion with a woman in jeans and a tee shirt, gesticulating in that open, sweet, animated Sara way. She is so alive.

Looking at her makes him feel like a part of him is dead.

He continues to watch. Sara seems like a different person. Perhaps it is the suit, but she seems more grown up. Only her enthusiasm and alertness show the eager student she was.

Sara’s companion pats her shoulder and goes to find a seat of her own. Sara looks over the crowd for a moment.

He looks away. It isn’t that he is unwilling to face her, but he doesn’t want to do it in so public a venue. He feels as if she sees him right now, every bit of shame and guilt and pain will be crystal clear.

She seems happy. Liberated. She wasn't like this in her later days in Vegas.

He has come to doubt his ability to read other people, however. He has spent an excess of time pondering this particular weakness of his.

He feels inept and older and deafer and utterly unfit for human companionship. He is ashamed of his actions and their consequences. Ashamed of how he has hurt her.

A colleague walks down the aisle. “Hey, Gil.” Grissom smiles at the man, someone who he worked with a lifetime ago in L.A.

He looks back toward the place she had occupied. She no longer stands there.

She is sitting in an aisle seat, speaking to someone across the aisle. Facing in his direction.

She catches his gaze and their eyes meet for the first time in two years.

Her eyes widen for a second, but then she smiles. Not a grin, but it is genuine and warm. He returns it instantly.

“Hi,” she mouths.

He waves back in response, a simple salute of his hand, smiling despite himself, and he wonders why his consciousness feels suddenly like a hurricane.

He doesn’t remember feeling pain like this, even when she left. It is just one of many emotions that are confusing him, tossing him to and fro.

He ponders the hurricane as the head of the Forensic Scientists Association takes the podium. His eyes dart back to Sara.

Despite her professional clothes, she seems casual, ever comfortable and curious. She still carries herself as if she were wearing jeans and hiking boots. As if she were still the inquisitive college student. He loves that about her.

He feels a presence next to him just as the man begins speaking. Doug Ecklie slinks into the set next to him. Doug is his newest protégé, to the horror of his father.

Doug is a shrewd, tough, inexplicably street-smart kid fresh out of MIT who worships Grissom, though he doesn’t show it. Most things Doug did as a minor were done to piss off his father, and as a young adult it is habitual.

Doug's career path, however, was chosen solely because he loves forensic science. The fact that his choice of Grissom as mentor pisses his father off -- well, that’s just an added bonus.

“Where were you at?” Doug whispers without taking his eyes off of the speaker.

“Beach.”

Doug shrugs and slouches low in his Misfits tee shirt. He looks like the archetypal D student, but for his keen interest in the topic, and the blue eyes that shrewdly view everything in their path.

Grissom doesn’t hear a word of the opening speech. He doesn’t look at her. He fixes his gaze on a pitcher of water near the speaker’s podium and tries to dissect his emotional response to seeing Sara Sidle for the first time in two years.

An emotional sampler. A little desire. A little guilt. Well, make that a lot of desire. God, he wants her. A little anger. And a lot of pain. He isn’t used to introspection this intense and it takes him some time to pick his emotions apart.

“There are some hot women here,” Doug whispers.

Grissom nods, simply because it is the easiest thing to do. He looks at Sara again. He can’t help it. His eyes wander to her hand, resting on the table in front of her.

He always loved her hands, deft and strong and compassionate. They are the way he remembers, only now clean and manicured.

He notes the lack of a ring on her finger. She must be taken. She is far too beautiful to be single. He identifies a new emotion - jealousy of every other man in the room.

Why would she want him? Maybe she did once, and maybe she worshipped him a little, and yes, he had gotten off on that, but now she is all grown up and what could he possibly have to offer her?

The opening session is followed by a cocktail hour, and then dinner. As he and Doug file into the adjoining ballroom with the rest of the crowd he is keenly aware of her presence in relation to him. He was sitting in the section closest to the door, therefore she is behind him somewhere.

Doug is one of the first ones up to the bar. This is not surprising. He returns with a Beam and Coke for himself and a beer for Grissom. He even remembers the brand. Doug is many things that don’t initially meet the eye. Grissom smiles and thanks him.

“Griss!”

He turns to see who is calling him. It’s a voice he hasn’t heard in five months.

“Warrick!”

“Hey man, good to see you.” Warrick shakes his hand and claps him soundly on the shoulder.

“Likewise. How are you?”

“Good. L.A. is allright. Hey Doug.”

“Warrick. How’s it hangin’?"

“Long and low,” Warrick grins. “How’s your old man?”

Doug snorts. “Still a farm-fresh asshole.”

Grissom sips his beer and looks bemused by the younger men and tries to not be obvious about searching the crowd. His heart is beating so fast he feels he might puke.

“Sara!” Warrick yells, giving voice to his thoughts.

He sees her a second later, coming through the doorway. He watches as she turns and sees them. She is so, so beautiful. She grins the sweet gap-toothed grin that she didn’t give Grissom earlier, and approaches.

“War!” She comes over and hugs Warrick tightly. Over Warrick’s back she meets Grissom’s eyes.

Her face falters for just a second, so quickly that he wonders if he imagined it.

“Grissom. How are you?” She releases Warrick and hugs him too, perhaps only because it would be rude not to, and his eyes widen as he puts his arms around her small body. She smells...he doesn’t even know what she smells like. Good, whatever it is. Her hair tickles his face.

“I’m doing well, Sara, how are you?”

“Good,” she says, and pulls away. The look in her eyes has changed. It is softer and harder all at once. Stormy, he thinks.

He wonders if she feels as he does, flustered and...fraught.

She hides it quickly, though, smiling gracefully. "So, what's new in Vegas?"

“Who are you?” Doug asks.

His intention is not to be rude, just mere curiosity. Unlike Grissom he has social skills, he merely elects not to use them. They’re like suits, he says. For special occasions only.

“Excuse me?” Sara blinks at him, finding his blue eyes to be discomforting.

“Sara Sidle.” Grissom says. “Sara, this is Doug Ecklie, our new CSI.”

“Ecklie!”

Doug laughs, his face suddenly warm and easy. “Yeah, that Ecklie. Pissed my dad off by coming to work for the dark side. Don’t hold it against me.”

“I won’t,” she says, pondering him with a raised eyebrow. Grissom senses that she dislikes Doug, and is selfishly glad for it. One less rival.

Not that it makes a damn bit of difference.

“So how are things in Indy?” Warrick asks.

“Busy. Not so damn hot. We get some interesting cases.”

“You look fabulous,” Warrick says, eyes running the length of her thin frame. “Even if you are a Fed.”

She smiles a disarmingly goofy smile and elbows Warrick in the ribs, then turns tentatively to Grissom. “So, how are Catherine and Nicky?”

“They send their regards.” Grissom says. Warrick also left Vegas, a year and a half after Sara did. “And so does Greg.”

“Oh, how is Greggo? Tell him I said hi.”

“Will do,” Grissom says with a small smile.

She remains there and they talk about Vegas. Warrick tells a story about Nick and Catherine that makes her dearly miss them. Homesickness for her old life is so strong, a sudden and powerful grief, that she needs a moment alone.

She excuses herself just before dinner. She slips through the crowd, eyes fixed on the French doors that led outside.

She kicks her shoes off and walks down to the ocean, pumps dangling from her fingers, jacket draped over her arm, breeze wafting over her bare arms.

She inhales deeply the ocean smell that reminds her of home. But the Gulf is nothing like where she came from. The hotels are huge and pink, and the land here is all flat.

She skipped this conference last year. Her official reason for doing so was that she was too busy settling into a new apartment and job.

She thought of Grissom every day since leaving. She thought about him until it sickened her

So much of her was wrapped up in him, his career, his tutelage. She followed him into forensics. She followed him to Vegas. So much of who she had become was related to him that she wasn’t sure where she began and ended.

She stopped following. She needed to find her own path.

And so she has. She lives in a nice apartment in Greenwood, and even adopted a couple of kittens. She plays paintball on a fairly regular basis and forces herself to read things unrelated to work. She has discovered a fascination in religious history and archaeology. She has a slowly-cultivated circle of friends, not all of whom are from work, and on one occasion actually threw a party with both.

She dated a carpenter who lived in her apartment complex, because he was cute and had a nice ass and mostly because he was nothing like Grissom. She approached him as an experiment, rather than out of desire. The desire grew in time and they dated casually for five months. It was nice to have someone cook her breakfast and rub her shoulders, and also to have someone in her bed. The relationship had little depth and even fewer demands. There was an amiable, painless breakup when he moved back east. They still email each other on occasions.

Of course her real reason for not attending last year’s conference had been Grissom. She simply wasn’t ready yet. She knew for a fact that he would be there because he was lecturing on linear regression techniques.

She was angry. She was sick of being his little protégé, little lovesick Sara. She knew it wasn’t all his fault, it was hers, but the very idea of sitting in a lecture listening to him chafed her.

The day after Sara gave her notice Catherine appeared, unannounced at her apartment.

The way Cath saw it was that Sara was a friend, and both she and the lab were going to experience her loss. Catherine felt that she was entitled to at least know why and express her loss. Not necessarily to talk Sara out of it, but to understand.

Sara smiles and remembers that day. She was so pissed at Catherine for charging headlong into her business. She had been weary from a long night of intermittent crying and on-line job hunting. Catherine showed up with breakfast and demanded to know why she was leaving.

Then she listened as Sara began to state reasons that she herself had only begun to articulate. Headstrong as Cath could be, she shut up and listened. She was a good listener.

“There’s more to it, isn’t there, though?” she said when Sara was done.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something between you and Grissom, something other than work stuff.”

“You tell me, Cath, you know him better.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Catherine, I love you but if even if there were something going on, it would be none of your business.”

Cath took this in stride. “True. But I like to think that the fact that you are both my friends gives me some license to meddle.”

“There’s nothing that can be resolved right now,” Sara said carefully.

“Sara, I know this is a dumb question to ask you but whatever it is that’s between you, have you at least told him about it? Have you guys leveled with each other?”

“No.” Sara freely admitted. “There are things I don’t have the heart or guts to tell him, and as far as he goes, well god knows what’s going on in his head.”

Catherine was quiet for a moment as she absorbed this. “Okay. Look, he may be oblivious, but he’s not unaffected. He misses you already. All I’m asking is that you don’t assume he’s emotionless just because he’s... Grissom. I’m not necessarily trying to get you to stay but I just want you to know that.”

“I do know that, actually.” she said softly.

Sara was frustrated. She knew that he cared for her, but what she herself had only recently come to realize was that she was in love with him, and that what he gave wasn’t enough.

She stops walking and faces the sea. She doesn’t regret leaving Vegas for a second, not at all, but seeing Grissom has brought the entire Vegas experience back to her.

The ache returns strongly. How much it hurt to slice away the life she had in Vegas, like cutting off a piece of her own flesh, and begin anew. She had a life in Vegas, and though she was unhappy, she still misses aspects of it.

Missing the people hurts the most.

She turns back and walks in the direction from which she came, tears stinging in her eyes. It was the right thing to do, and she would do it again. She just wasn’t prepared for how much it would smart.

She blinks back her tears and focuses on the breeze bathing her body. Then her cell phone rings.

“Sidle.”

“Hey girl, where are you? My flight was late and I’m only now getting in.” It’s Calleigh.

“I’m out on the beach. Where’re you at?”

“I’m down in the lobby.”

“I’ll meet you for dinner. Give me a couple of minutes.”

Sara arrives windblown and smiling in the lobby a few minutes later. Due to work scheduling, her co-worker and best friend Calleigh Duquesne had to take a later flight. Calleigh stands in the lobby, looking julep-cool and perfect as always. She smiles her perfect smile. “Hey.”

“Hey, Cal. How was your flight?”

“I’m famished. Let’s eat.”

They are late for dinner. They stand in the doorway surveying the tables. The ones with the Vegas people that Sara once worked with, and the Miami people Calleigh worked with, as well as the ones with their current FBI cronies, are all full. They wind up sitting with two very old white male medical examiners from Skokie.

Calleigh looks over the crowd and whispers to Sara “So which one is the infamous Gil Grissom?”

Sara swallows and quietly whispers “Black shirt, blue jeans, grayish hair, blue eyes, five o’ clock.”

“Not what I expected, but I suppose I can see the appeal.”

Sara stares at Grissom for a few seconds. He has grown some facial hair that makes him look incredibly good.

“Well, it’s a moot point,” she says quickly.

When Calleigh had transferred from Miami to the Indy field office, Sara disliked her for about two weeks. Then, somehow, she and Sara had become friends while working a horrible case with five bodies and zero heads. One slow night in the lab, Sara told her the basics about Grissom. Calleigh understood.

“Now Mister Warrick Brown, on the other hand...”

“Go for it. He’s a good guy.”

“Maybe I will,” Calleigh smiles and eats a forkful of salad.

“So, Sar, who do you like?”

It is a question that has plagued her since arriving at the hotel. Of course all her thoughts have been on Grissom. She won't go down that road, though, not even with her closest friend.

She says the first thing that comes to mind. “Doug Ecklie is...interesting.”

"You'll have to introduce me." Calleigh, ever polite and gracious the Southern Belle, begins speaking to the older gentlemen.

She is the original Steel Magnolia, Sara thinks, actually, more like a steel flytrap, pleasant and charming until someone crosses her, then --snap!--the incisive steel of her jaw stings, and the strength of her metal interior shows. She has proven herself so many times to male peers, superiors, and even subordinates that the snap of the trap was effortless. She is the absolute master of putting men in their place with one graceful phrase, smiling like a debutante all the while.

If she’s the steel flytrap, Sara thinks, then who am I? The girl next door, maybe? Well, the unabashedly intelligent girl next door with the weird job. An emotional woman with passion that unfortunately doesn't see the bedroom as much as I'd like...

She feels eyes on her, that sixth sense she has observed and pondered but can never scientifically explain. Grissom.

He doesn’t hide the fact that he is staring. His expression is serious, suddenly very intense and she feels the molecules between them are whooshing and resonating through space. She can feel it in her ears.

She holds his gaze, then cocks her head to the side. He smiles, then looks away.

“Earth to Sara? What was that about?” Calleigh turns around to look from Grissom to Sara and back.

“I have no idea.”

.

Not many people are interested in the panel discussion on political issues in forensics. Sara and Calleigh are hanging out on the beach with Doug, Warrick, and a guy from the Indy field office named Paul. They sit on a blanket and drink the better part of a bottle of Jim Beam. Warrick and Sara catch up while the others throw a Frisbee around.

“So how are you, Sara?” Warrick changed into jeans and a gray wifebeater that compliments the light in his eyes.

“I’m good. I really miss all you guys. I had this major pang of homesickness earlier.”

“I understand that, totally.” Of course he did, he lived in Vegas his whole life before being recruited by L.A.

“What do you miss most about Vegas?”

He smiles, and is quiet. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“Catherine. Don’t tell her.”

“Warrick, I wouldn’t.”

“And I bet I don’t even have to guess what you miss most.”

“You’ve got me. I just can’t live without Greggo. I freely admit it.”

Warrick laughs. “Yeah, right.”

She leans back on her palms and looks out at the ocean, trying to detect the line between sea and sky.

A frisbee flies at her, and just before it crashes into her nose she catches it, leaps up, and tosses it back.

Grissom walking near the pool. Maybe it’s the whiskey, maybe it’s her newly defined sense of self, but she walks toward him.

“Grissom!” He keeps walking.

“Griss!” she calls again, and this time he turns and sees her.

She has changed into jeans and a tank top and it takes a concerted effort to not stare at the shining stud in her belly button.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I hope you weren’t yelling at me for too long.” She watches his face carefully. This brings back all the times she was exquisitely sensitive to his affect, wondering what feelings were behind it, what meaning. She hated that tedious second-guessing.

“No, just twice.” she says.

“Good.”

“Yeah. Um, let’s have lunch some time this week?" She strives for, and achieves, a light tone." I want to catch up with you.”

She does? Then why did she leave? What is she trying to do? He looks at her carefully, but there is no artifice, no manipulation, just honest, open Sara. He knows that she isn't capable of those things.

“You’re welcome to join me now.”

“No, um, I’m already occupied. We’re hanging out over there. You’re welcome to join us though, if you want."

"No thank you. I'm running late for a roach race." He gestured toward the box he held.

"Ah. Well, good luck." "Thank you," he smiled, for no other reason that that he was happy to see her. "Hey, is that really Ecklie’s son?”

“Yes.”

“How did he manage to be born without horns and hooves?”

“Milkman?” Grissom says, deadpan, one eyebrow raised.

She laughs. She realizes that most of all, she missed his wry one-liners.

“It’s good to see you, Sara.”

Did he look at her like this before? His eyes are intense. There is definately desire there. She doesn’t know why. Maybe she is the greener grass that grows on the other side. Maybe he’s one of those men who always wants what he can’t have.

She vows to ask him about it. She has achieved enough distance that she isn’t afraid. Well, she is afraid, it isn’t enough to keep her mouth shut anymore. She values him and their friendship enough to take that step.

“Thanks. Tell you what. Come track me down after the panel discussion tomorrow and we’ll do something.” She wants to be the one in charge. She is not chasing after him.

“Okay, I’ll do that.”

“Allright. Good night.”

“Night.”

She walks away, breathing out slowly. Something about him is different. The facial hair is new. The lack of glasses. She isn’t a bit surprised that she is still turned on by him. She still wants him, and as suspected seeing him confirms for her that she will always love him in some way.

The thing that really irritates her is that she is more attracted to him than ever.

She won’t act on it, though. What she wants to do is clear the air between them, to talk.

She sits back down on the blanket.

“So Sara, what’s up with Mister Grissom?”

Sometimes Calleigh reminds her of Catherine so much it’s frightening.

.

Sara yawns and slides into her seat, cuppin her hands around a large coffee.

Not many people are interested or awake enough to attend the lecture on applied physics, but apparently Doug Ecklie is. He drops into the seat beside her without asking.

“Morning.” she says sarcastically. “Have a seat.”

He just grins. “Don’t mind if I do. How’d you sleep?”

“Fairly well, considering Calleigh snores like a bullmoose. Are you still drunk?”

“I’m always drunk.”

She laughs despite herself. “You must be the apple of your father’s eye.”

Doug snorts. He is relaxed like a cat, calm but predatory. She rather likes him, and has to admit that for the offspring of Conrad Ecklie, he is kind of sexy.

“I’ve heard stories about you.” he says.

“Whatever it was, I didn’t do it.”

“I hear you’re not big on sleep, that you’re a vegan and you are a proud member of the mile high club.”

“Excuse me?” She laughs. “Actually the first two are true, but I have to ask where you heard the third?”

“A gentleman never tells.”

She laughs again at the idea of Doug as a gentleman. The only one she ever told that to was Grissom. That rat! But, wait, what about that night she and Catherine went out for happy hour? She knew Grissom would never tell anyone anyway. Not like it matters.

“It’s not fair, I don’t know anything about you except that your father’s a... very unpopular person in the department.”

He laughs. “You can say it. I know he’s a psycho control freak dick.”

“Okay then.”

Yes, Doug is definitely refreshing. And certainly always surprising. She forgets about him when the lecture begins.

.

“Hot date, Griss?” Doug says, bouncing a beach ball off of the ceiling. Grissom has been in the bathroom for a half hour now, combing his hair and scowling at his reflection. He glances again at the clock.

Normally Doug isn’t this annoying. Unlike Greg Sanders he can pull back when he senses that he is annoying his mentor. But now his presence rankles Grissom.

Grissom elects to pretend he didn’t hear that. He could plead air conditioning, white noise. Otosclerosis. It’s downright convenient at times. Everybody in the lab knows about it, and his surgery isn't until next week.

He glances at the clock. Five minutes. He then looks back to his reflection. Should he shave? He looks scruffy. Is scruffy good? He realizes that he could do this solitary dance of self-doubt all night, so he just walks away from the mirror.

“Hot date, Griss?” Doug repeats.

“Do I look like I have a hot date?” He says, letting a fraction of his agitation show.

“Actually... yes.”

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know. You just have a vibe about you. Edgy or something.”

“That could be due to the fact that you are annoying, Doug,” Grissom says evenly with a small smile.

“Could be. But I doubt it.”

Grissom turns away from Doug’s grin and curses the LVPD for not springing for single occupancies. I’m an expert in this field, and they make me bunk with Ecklie’s brat. I swear to god...

He loves his work but his CSIs are a little too observant sometimes. It makes him alternately annoyed and proud, depending on the situation.

“I’ll see you later, Doug. Thanks as always for your interest in my well-being,” he said dryly.

“Just looking out for ya, boss.” Grissom doesn't have to look back to know that Doug is grinning..

Grissom mumbles something unintelligible.

“Hey, Griss?” Doug calls, just as Grissom is undoing the deadbolt.

“What!”

“She still loves you, man.”