WIP -- "Seesaw" (Part Deux)
Title: Seesaw
Author: Waffle
Word Count: That's a bit of a stupid thing to have for a WIP, isn't it?
Genre(s): Drama/Romance
Rating: PG-13, T, CSI-2, or Naughty Waffle, whatever is your preference.
Disclaimer: When AOL gets a brain, I'll own it, okay?
Spoilers: There's a major and nasty one from "Way to Go" (6x24), which, if said sarcastically, reflects my feelings towards the writers of CSI.
Author’s Note(s): Hello again, and sorry for the delay in updating. This chapter does actually involve Catherine, and even though there is one paragraph that might make you scream from its abundance of G-SR, it's more CGR. Thank God. Reviews containing concrit and praise are much appreciated, and from last chapter, I'd like to thank blushingsigh (isn't the word "nipples" hilarious, though?) and coolcatzz (hey, better yet, why don't we have a CGR bonfire to burn it?). Part Un is running around fully-clothed at a nude beach. You'll have to catch it to read it. My apologies. So read on if you dare...and enjoy. :) Oh yes, and this is still unbeta'd.
Summary: “God, a child. She’s practically a child, with the smooth, pale skin and curious eyes, with the adorable gap between her teeth and brown hair that falls in front of those eyes when she attempts to assemble a puzzle that needs to be solved.”
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Chapter Two: With Friends and Feelings and Faults
He’s possessed.
He must be, he thinks, because no sane man would risk what he held and still holds dear to his heart for more years than he’d like to count - but counts anyway to pass the time when he sits alone at home with his heart in his hand. And only for human contact, the touch of a being flawed like himself, only someone not as sinful, not as terrible and vile and disgusting. Someone younger and more innocent and more like - more like a child than he ever was.
God, a child. She’s practically a child, with the smooth, pale skin and curious eyes, with the adorable gap between her teeth and brown hair that falls in front of those eyes when she attempts to assemble a puzzle that needs to be solved. But maybe - maybe that little girl is actually a woman with silky, milky dermis and interrogative eyes, with the flaw in her teeth and auburn hair that falls in front of those investigative eyes as she sits atop of him topless and does what she’s wanted to do for so long, the scream welling in her throat and the heat emanating from her pores on her skin now shiny with sweat and taut with the compromising position she has assumed. And as she places her hands on his chest - fingers now long and immaculate but once short and grimy - with the nails still bitten nervously, he feels his old, creaky lungs inhale sharply and crackle as the stale air is then released painfully. It’s hard to breathe, and for a fleeting moment he thinks that maybe he should just stop because is life really worth living after committing such a heinous act and what is she doing because he feels like he’s going to burst and cause an explosion that’s as loud as the scream he feels coming to his -
“Grissom?” sounds an inquiring voice, causing him to come to his wits and to look right into Catherine’s brilliant blue eyes and shining smile. “Are you okay?” There’s a concerned tone in her voice, and in her eyes, he sees the worry not of a mother but of a friend for another friend. “Yeah, thanks,” he says, wondering what she must have thought when she walked into his office and saw him in whatever position he had taken.
She sits on the corner of his desk, as custom, and turns toward him. There is a silence, but it’s comfortable, although he has a feeling that the chance of that changing is imminent. He wants to tell her, needs to tell her, but he doesn’t want to see her reaction. “Catherine, I…”
She looks inquiringly at him, like she has been the entire time that she’s been there with him, her entire career there. Her eyes are coolly investigative, always scrutinizing whatever lies before her, always searching for that one clue that will solve the case. They follow unevenly elevated paths of crime, moving up and down, like a seesaw, he supposes, rising and falling with feelings and thoughts, and moving in sync with the case. And every so often she allows those eyes and her mind to drift from the matter at hand onto and into personal affairs and to somehow bring issues that are supposed to lie at home into work, falling from that seesaw of her professional world of death and onto the one of external life. It irritates him, yes, but at least she brings some of the outer world, with tears of happiness and the complacent sighs of children, into an occupation where cries that are cried are of sorrow and often done too often and too loudly as well. She brings this into a career where children who are abused, exploited, and disposed lie on metal tables, their pale bodies not shivering from the cool metal and their mouths not forming complaints of the frigidity and their feet not walking to the large metal door which leads them into more rooms that are just as cold - if not more cold - emotionally but not physically.
But they would not care about that if they were able to rise from that freezing metal table and walk out of that cold, cold room because their bodies would be aware of the warm air and would embrace it while their minds would be naïve to the emotionally damp and dark atmosphere surrounding them and everyone else in the building. Even her, except she is able to keep most of the chill out of her mind because she has those warm memories that seem to flame compared to what surrounds her most of the day. But not always. No, sometimes that iciness will enter her mind, and she will cry at the pain of it, that numbing headache that she can, ironically enough, feel. He reasons that this is the only professional where a person can be numb emotionally and also be able to feel every emotion that passes through that person’s body. But maybe Catherine will tell him that stripping is also a career where a person can do the same.
And he wouldn’t mind going into the past and saving her from that exploitation, that career she probably considered and still considers just as grotesque, only to have her stand before him in her uniform and strip seductively, visible curves becoming more visible and that indifference he saw in her eyes when he first saw her defrosting in the heat of her passionate admiration to him for saving her. He imagines her naked body in all its glory and does not feel dirty or sinful. But why then, he asks himself, does he feel so disgusting and sinful when he imagines -
“Grissom, you’ve got to stop doing that. I’m all for your reflectivity, but don’t you think you’re taking a bit far?” There she is again, Catherine, her voice penetrating those thoughts, those thoughts he thinks when counting the years that he has loved his greatest love isn’t enough, when counting the hundreds dead bodies and recounting the hundreds disturbing scenes does not assuage the loneliness he feels most nights.
He holds his heart - his job, his love - to his chest where his heart should be but isn’t because he wants - no, needs - to actually hold what is dear to him. He cannot just let it lie within him until all of it comes spilling from him when the loneliness and the reality overflow the boundaries of his body, when it becomes too much to bear.
Maybe, he thinks, what lives within this building is reality, and maybe what she brings into the building on the heels of her shoes and the rest of her body is reality, too, but the other half of it. He has a harsh reality, the burning reality whose existence he would like to deny, while she brings in the soft, flowing one, like the robe from which Sara stripped, revealing -
“Damnit!” he yells, the thought severed but not completely forgotten. Catherine jumps a little at the loud outburst, her face becoming slightly more serious, somewhat more drawn like his.
“Grissom, what’s wrong?” she asks in a compassionate tone, and it angers him even more. This is completely out-of-character for him. Usually composed, calm, and thoughtful, now raging passionately. She did it to him, her face smug before she screamed joyfully and fell to the bed, pure, erotic ecstasy wrapped in skin, bones, and childlike features. That face, that scream, they are in his mind now, destroying all thoughts of Catherine and what is the only love he will outwardly acknowledge: his occupation, his life. He stands from his seat, looks to the floor, curves his thumb and pointer finger around his forehead, and speaks:
“Catherine,” he starts, and she looks at him strangely. He continues: “I’ve done something that I’m regretting.”
“Yes?” her voice is as concerned and caring as it was before, but with slightly dubious - and maybe even accusatory - undertones to it. He tells her that she might want to sit, but she stands on the right side of the desk, leaning forward, fingers grasping the edge to help her keep balance, while he does the same on the left.
And he looks upon the scene before speaking and laughs morosely to himself as he realizes the symbolism in their stances.