Imperfections: Las Vegas Part 3

[dashamte]

I've got another one tidied and ready to go. Still not mine (and what a long list I've got now of characters that aren't mine!) Still no profit but feedback.

Gen and Het
Crossover CSI and TS



Grissom was tall enough to have found the aisle seat more physically comfortable. If being comfortable had been an option at all. The foul, recycled air, the punishing vibration, the constant changes in air pressure and angle--comfortable wasn't possible. Grissom had retreated to the window seat and tried not to think about how glad he was that Sara was between him and everyone else on the plane.

Ever since they'd processed a body in the aisle of the first-class cabin of Las Vegas Air flight 909, Grissom had been having nightmares about being delirious and in pain and murdered by the other passengers in a panicked frenzy. He'd had the nightmare exactly four times, but he couldn't tell himself it was just a bad dream. Tony Candlewell had really died.

But then, Tony Candelwell had been alone. Sara was seated on the aisle, leaving the middle seat open between them. For the first part of the flight, the extra space had helped stave off the sensation of claustrophobia--a physical reaction to cramped quarters and an absence of normal scents and air movement, not an emotional anxiety--but now she seemed very far away. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and took her hand.

The seatbelt light was on, but she undid hers and slid into the middle seat anyway. "Hey? You okay?" she said.

He couldn't hear her. Even the vibration of her voice was lost in the pounding of the engines. Grissom held himself very still. He was uncomfortable, but he was safe. He wasn't sick. He could think clearly. He didn't have to make any decisions or solve any problems--that was what he'd brought a guide for. The fear he was feeling was baseless. He was overtired and overwhelmed, and yes, that caused a fear response, but he could handle it.

Sara pushed the call button and then squirmed around to say something over her shoulder.

"I'm okay," he said, belatedly. Probably too loudly.

She squeezed the hand she was still holding. "I know. Just another half hour or so. It'll all be over soon."

The flight attendant appeared with a squat glass of something that smelled like carbonated water. Sara placed it in his free hand, then fished a small chunk of ginger candy from a baggy in her pocket. She dropped it into his drink. "Sip. And don't eat the candy," she said.

It was Sara who found baggage claim, and then their luggage. It was Sara who signed all the papers for the rental car. She navigated out of the airport and found the hotel downtown. It would have been embarrassing, being so totally useless, except sentinels couldn't afford pride. She checked them into the hotel. Found the rooms. Opened the connecting doors in between. Found the suitcase with his bedding and began to strip the bed.

This last he could have done himself, except it was a symbolic act. The guide changed the sheets. The intimacy of the gesture made Grissom uncomfortable, but it would have been the grossest of lies to take the blanket out of her hands and pretend that she was only along as a formality.

Grissom paced, not looking at Sara as she folded the hotel sheets and set them in a drawer. He was sweating, even though it wasn't hot. Also--something was wrong. He turned in a circle, his eyes searching the walls, the carpet. It looked like a hotel room. Not as flashy as some of the ones in Vegas, but clean enough.

Sara stopped his search pattern with a hand on his stomach. "What's wrong?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Is your stomach upset from the flight?"

"No," he gasped. And then, "I can't breathe." The air was thick and heavy. It tasted...off. And there wasn't enough of it. Not nearly enough. Panting didn't help. He panted harder.

Unruffled, Sara put an arm around his waist and led him to the tiny balcony. They were eight floors up with a view of the blue bay. It looked invitingly open, and his mind thought, 'yes, right,' as she opened the door and guided him out--

Into worse. Much worse. The air here was bitter and almost gooey. Even as he staggered back into the room, he was frantically running through airborne toxins, accidental and deliberate. "There's been a spill," he gasped. "Or an attack. We have to inform the authorities."

"What--? Gris!"

"There's something in the air." He started toward the phone.

"What? No. What do you smell?"

Sara was no help. How badly was he exposed? How concentrated did the exposure have to be before normals began to feel it? How many people were at risk? Only thousands? Or hundreds of thousands?

Sara caught his forearms and shook him once. "Stop," she said.

He stopped. He didn't have the strength to fight her. He was dizzy and off balance. He couldn't breathe.

She pulled him hard by one arm and snagged the desk chair with her free hand. Grissom stumbled and lost his balance. He landed on the chair, Sara's hands pushing him forward into the stream of the air conditioning unit, which she snapped to high. She was talking, and he could hear her, but the words didn't register in his mind.

The cold in his face helped a little, and the horrible smothering sensation was not nearly as bad. Sara squatted beside him, one hand trying to sooth the rigid muscles of his shoulders. He managed enough coherence to say the important thing. "There's an airborne contaminant. We have to call somebody."

"No. There isn't. You're reacting to the change in air."

"Sara--"

"We've lost a couple of thousand feet in altitude, and we're near the water. The humidity is nearly one hundred percent. And then there's the salt."

"No. The air--"

"It's fine. But you got overwhelmed on the plane and you've been restless since we left the airport. You're used to very dry air, either very hot or very cold, not this muggy crap they're hardly bothering to air condition."

That couldn't be it. Grissom didn't make this kind of mistake. "No."

"Yes," she said softly. "I've seen you sick. Okay, it was once. But this isn't you sick."

Grissom closed his eyes. The air on his face was bitingly cold now. It was light. And normal. He buried his face in his hands. "I can't believe I had an uptake distortion response to water vapor. That's...going to look lovely in my file." He tried to make a joke of it, sighed inwardly as it fell flat.

Sara slid her arm around his shoulders. He wished it was a friendly gesture, but she was being strictly professional. His guide, offering comfort. Because he needed it. "I wouldn't call it that. Your perceptions just got thrown off. You were disoriented from the flight. Sentinels aren't built for fast altitude or time changes. Some can't fly at all."

He sighed.

"Headache?"

He nodded.

She disappeared and returned with an aspirin and a bottle of watered down sports drink. The core was still frozen. He took the bottle but waved the aspirin away. "It's nothing. I hyperventilated." He tried to smile. "As though this weren't already embarrassing enough. If you'd just let me pass out, I'm sure I would have been a lot easier to manage."

Her left eyebrow quirked. "Nice. Is that your professional evaluation, Boss?"

Embarrassed, he looked away.

"Right," she said, "I've seen you work with Catherine. You're a model of patience. With much bigger prima dona crap than this."

"Catherine's not that bad," he said automatically.

Sara snorted.

"She was a late bloomer. In her twenties before she came on line. It's not easy...."

"Right. And flying's not easy. And you've been under a lot of stress. So. Knock it off?" Her hand was back on his shoulder, offering a vivid input that was familiar and unthreatening. (Oh, a danger, yes that: so beautiful and so smart and so *young* and working for him. A danger, but not a threat. She wouldn't hurt or abandon a partner she was guiding. ) She washed her hair in yucca soap, and her conditioner was aloe. She smelled like airplane, which was harsh, but under that she smelled like the lab. Home.

It was an effort not to turn his face into her shoulder and hide.

"You need to shower," she said. "And maybe eat?"

Right, that was one of the nightmares, wasn't it? A sentinel who stopped eating? She was thinking like a guide. "Yeah, I should eat." He got up, found his legs steady, retrieved a towel and a change of clothes from his suitcase. "Order something from room service. It doesn't matter what."

She followed him to the bathroom door. "It doesn't matter what?" she repeated. "You're just going to eat what turns up?"

He shrugged casually. "Sure. I...don't feel like making a decision. Whatever you pick will be fine."

He shut the door between them, turned the water, and sank down onto the closed toilet seat.

***

Sara was sitting on the second bed when he came out. She was reading a forensics journal. She put it down as he came out and watched as he put his dirty clothes in the plastic bag that kept his things carefully segregated.

"So I ordered sandwiches and soup," she said.

He nodded to show he had heard.

"You're not testing me, are you?"

He looked up, astonished and a little horrified. "Of course not." He looked into her eyes, searching for hurt or resentment. He couldn't make sense of her expression or scent. "Your competence was never in doubt." He hoped that was enough. It was the truth. He'd brought her in two years before as--well, very nearly as a last hope. One of his sentinels had been in a downward spiral that showed no signs of ending well. Warrick had alienated his guide and his supervisor. He was engaging in progressively more destructive behaviors. Any hope Grissom had had of dealing with the problem himself evaporated when Brass got transferred and Grissom found himself supervising all the sentinels and all the guides and the assistant supervisor for everything else. He'd had no time, he'd had no ideas, and he hadn't even had a guide on staff he could leave in charge of a crime scene in a pinch. And then he'd gotten Sara. And she'd been capable. Despite Warrick's resentment, she'd had him straightened out and showing up on time--and doing reliable work--in two weeks. After two years of excellent work...why did he think he would question her now?

She nodded slowly. "Right. You're not testing me. You're testing you." She waved her hand at the room service menu. "You're trying to figure out if you can handle having a guide."

"I always work with a guide," he protested.

"No, you work with students. You haven't actually needed a guide in, what? Ten, fifteen years?"

He didn't answer that. Admitting it would sound like bragging.

She sat up, folding her feet under her, and laid her hands in her lap. "So you're not considering the possibility that you're going to need a real guide and testing me out to see if you can work with me. You're trying to figure out if you can work with anyone at all. If you can trust someone to order food or get you out of an airport."

"Maybe. Yeah."

"You didn't have to come all the way down here to do that."

"We came down here to go to a conference and get some more information on an ongoing case."

"Right," she said, nodding.

Slowly, Grissom approached the bed and sat on the edge. She said nothing, didn't rush him. He appreciated that. "I guess you've already noticed that I'm absolutely terrified."

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. Kinda. But you've already noticed that I have weird issues with authority, so I think we're probably even."

Ruthlessly, he forced himself to drag the truth into the open. "I never wanted you to be my guide. I wanted...so many other things." He looked up, hoping she understood, wanting her to understand. Put this way it sounded like a rejection, but he couldn't put words to what was impossible now.

Sara was nodding sadly. "Yeah? I didn't think you'd decided yet."

"I was taking things slowly."

"Heh. Grissom, you were into glacial time. I know rock formations that moved more quickly than you did."

"I wanted...I wanted something solid. I thought there was plenty of time. Well. Enough time."

"Ah. That would have been nice." She turned her eyes away. "I couldn't understand why suddenly you wanted nothing to do with me."

"Sara. I." What could he say? I couldn't risk you noticing what I didn't want to think about? I was scared and I couldn't think clearly? I suddenly realized that I didn't have a damn thing to offer you? "I'm sorry I hurt you."

She closed her eyes. He smelled tears and felt vaguely ill. "Sara, I can't. I can't. It's taking all I've got just to keep things together--"

"I know. I know. You need a guide a lot more than you need a prom date."

"If the surgery doesn't come through soon, I'm going to need a very, very good guide."

"The old fashioned kind, who watches your back in a dangerous world," she said.

"Yeah." He took a deep breath. "You want the job?"

"I'll take it, if it comes to that," she said. "But you're not there yet. I've been looking into medical tourism."

He considered that. "Eastern Europe? No, thank you."

She snorted. "*Hell,* no, thank you," she corrected. "They don't know what to do with sentinels in Eastern Europe. Canada, although we might run into liability issues there. India is probably the best bet. They have excellent care there, for people who can afford it. And nobody beats India for sentinel medicine."

And wasn't that a thought. Damn. India? And flying to Washington had been bad.

He was going deaf. It was a matter of months, now. Much longer, and it would be too late to do anything about it.

"Food's here," he said getting up several seconds before the knock at the door.

"You heard it?" Sara asked.

"Smelled the soup."

The sandwiches were grilled cheese and turkey club (no bacon). The soups were tomato and broccoli cheese. As he set the dishes on the room's tiny table, Grissom said, "I assume the club is for me?"

"I can pick the turkey off, if you want the grilled cheese."

"No, this is fine."

Sitting at the table, they were closer together then they'd been on the bed. It was awkward, though it shouldn't have been. It had been a long time since they'd been alone together without being in the middle of a case. Without evidence to talk about...what was left was both personal and unpleasant.

The sandwich was flat and tasteless. The cheese soup was all salt and fat. More than a few spoonfuls of the soup and he'd be sick, so it would have to be the sandwich. "Sometimes food is wonderful, but mostly, the purpose of food is to be nutrition." He realized he was quoting his mother. She'd always been practical about food. She'd understood the days when taste was off the scale and nothing seemed to appetizing. Certainly, she'd lived through enough of them herself. But like it or not, you still had to eat.

Sara pushed the tomato soup closer. "We can switch," she offered.

Warrick and Nick ate after her all the time. Not all sentinels would do that, and it was as unsanitary as hell, but there was no point in pretending that they weren't completely cross contaminated anyway. Guides stood close enough to breathe the same air, and there was a lot of touching. "Nick and Warrick aren't going to be happy," he said, cautiously dipping his spoon into the tomato soup.

"I think they'd rather see a lot less of me than not see you at all."

"Will they be all right?" He tasted the tomato soup. It was better, but sweeter then he'd like.

She shrugged. "Nick can work with practically anybody these days, but you can't give Warrick to some new graduate. He needs somebody who won't back down."

Another bite of soup. "Holly couldn't do some filling in--?"

She snorted. "Yeah, dream on. One, Catherine would kill you if you cut down on her time with *her* guide and, two, Holly is a marshmallow. Warrick would run all over her. So would Nick."

And that was true. Catherine steamrolled her sweet little guide, but Catherine made good decisions in the field, so that wasn't actually a problem. "Damn. It's hard to find a good guide who can also document evidence." Forensic sentinels were rare, but much more common than cross-trained guides. And Grissom's department already had more then its fair share.

Sara smiled and shook her head.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. You. It's always about the lab with you."

He nodded. "Right."

Half the sandwich and most of the soup were left, but he couldn't force down any more. He pushed the plate away and drained the last of the sports drink that Sara had brought in the backpack. All the ice had melted and it was lukewarm.

She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "Whatever happens--you'll still be the same person," she said gently.

He had known she was a hard science girl to the core, but really, Grissom had assumed she'd paid enough attention to the anthropology in guide school to know better than that. "No," he said, "I won't. What you're trying to say is, not being a whole sentinel doesn't mean I won't be a whole person."

Her eyes got big. She whiffed embarrassment and worry. "Right. You've thought about this."

"I've been thinking about this since I was in grade school. If I... when I...I'll be in another world. It's a valid world. A world with a lot to offer. But it won't be the same. I won't be the same."

She was a squall of emotions now. He smelled uncertainty and pain. He couldn't guess what she was thinking, or what he might say to comfort her. "No more interrogations," he said. "And I won't be able to guide in the field." Not if he couldn't ever turn his back on his partner.

"You'll still be the best bug guy in the world. You'll still be gifted with spatter patterns and prints. You can still teach."

"Can I? Can I really put *any* of my people in the hands of a student when I can't be sure I'll be able to back them up?"

"And hearing it is the only way to know about a problem? It's not even your best way. No. I've seen you work."

"Maybe," he conceded. "I don't know." He began to gather the used dishes. They'd have to go into the hall, or in an hour the smell would be completely unbearable.

"Do you think you could sleep?" Sara asked.

"I'm not sure I should, yet. The weekend is going to happen on normal time."

She nodded. "Up to you. If you're all right by yourself, I thought I'd take a walk, pick up some bottled water, some soda."

"Did you want company?" he asked.

"Ah, not really," she said.

Trying to be discreet, Grissom sniffed her. No anger, which was good. Not particularly sad, either. A little fear, but no more then he himself would have if he'd just agreed to partner with a sentinel facing either profound disability or a surgical anesthetic he had a fifteen percent chance of not surviving. "Let me know when you get back."

"I'll come check on you."

He sat for a long time after she left, watching the afternoon sun cast shadows across the floor, reminding himself how pointless it was to wish things were different.

~end