Arrested development?

[vr_trakowski]

Three months.

Grissom stared at a shelf full of specimens in his office, not really seeing them, and fiddled with the pen he'd been using. He kept going back over the past three months in his head--months that had been profitably spent for the most part. Months, he thought, where he could be proud of himself.

Mostly.

Out of all the puzzles he encountered in life and work, people were the hardest. The "how" was the easy part for him. The "why" of crimes sometimes became clear, but even then, it often remained unreal to him. A logical pattern, perhaps, or one shaped by the pressure of human emotions. It wasn't that he wasn't human himself, and there were times when he could see exactly why someone had done what they had done. All too clearly, on occasion. He shuddered a little at the memory, of sitting across the table from someone who had slaughtered two people in a jealous, despairing fury, and knowing exactly why the man had done it.

But for the last three months he had applied himself to one particular puzzle, and found it easy. Perhaps because they were so much alike.

It had shocked him badly to see Sara sitting defeated in the police station's waiting room. She'd let him take her hand, let him take her home--his place, not hers--had apparently trusted him enough to be able to fall asleep on his couch. Grissom still remembered standing over her, knowing that they had to talk, but unwilling to wake her. She looked so fragile, so tired. Vulnerable, in a way he hadn't seen in over a year.

When she hadn't woken at the sound of his voice, he'd dared to lift her into his arms and take her into his spare bedroom. She'd been far too light, and he filed that under something else to discuss with her later, if she let him. He'd pulled off her shoes and covered her with the blanket, then dodged the boxes on his way out of the room. And in the afternoon, when she'd woken, he'd informed her that she was taking two weeks of mandatory vacation.

She hadn't argued, and that worried him too.



The start to something, but darned if I can remember what it was going to be. Sometimes that happens--I get stuck and dump something, and never get back to it. With CSI, too, sometimes changes happen on-screen before I can play out an idea, and it becomes invalid. It was a change, writing longer stories for a series that is still going.

Pity. I've got a couple of starts that could be wonderfully angsty, but I'm not sure the G/S relationship, such as it is or appears to be, can still support them. Oh well, if I had time to write them all, I'd be independently wealthy, and who knows what that would get me into.