#royal-lover

that’s grissom and sara with each other.

put them in a big, empty room---or outside, with unlimited space---and they will still choose to stand goddamned on top of each other. they will stand goddamned on top of each other at the lab. they will stand goddamned on top of each other at crime scenes. they will stand goddamned on top of each other in company. they will stand goddamned on top of each other alone. they will stand goddamned on top of each other no matter where they are, how much room is available to them, or how strongly social conventions suggest that they should stand farther apart.

and since they only really do so with each other, that means that “having no concept of personal space with each other” is a them thing. 

it’s something grissom specifically does because it’s sara, and something sara specifically does because it’s grissom.

now, obviously, they never come out an say, “i stand unreasonably close to this person because of this reason.”

but since they’re them, and since their defining feature is that they are deeply and hopelessly in love with each other for years but have no real outlet to express that love, my take is that they do so because they’re drawn to each other---that, like in the carpenters song, they “long to be” close, to just get that little bit of contact that comes from brushing elbows while huddled in conference at a table or leaning their bodies against each other while examining evidence at a crime scene.

honestly, it’s peak yearning: because their love is “forbidden,” and they are not at liberty to express what they feel through more overt demonstrations of affection such as kissing or having sex, they seek out even the smallest, most innocuous touches, desperate to be close to each other somehow.

@bartramcat has written beautifully about how gsr resembles a medieval romance---see here---and certainly one of the ways that it does so is insofar as, for years, grissom and sara’s only physical province with each other is, as per the conventions of courtly love, in the form of these chaste, seemingly incidental touches, these grazes of wrists, these meetings of shoulders, these fleeting instances of standing back to back in a dark room. 

though some might note their behavior as socially strange---seriously, who stands that close to each other in an otherwise empty room????---few would consider it overtly or at least inherently “romantic.” 

the way they touch each other is so innocent as to be uninformative to anyone not actively looking for romantic subtext between them---which would include almost everyone at the lab who already knows them and already knows that that’s just how they are around each other and have pretty much always been, since even the early days.

of course, to what degree grissom and sara are consciously aware of what they’re doing is a matter of debate.

for example, when sara leans so far over grissom’s shoulder that if he turned his head just an inch to her side, they’d be kissing, is she actively thinking about what she is doing---or is it more of a magnetic thing, a pull she remains mostly oblivious to? 

or when grissom encroaches deep into sara’s “personal bubble,” perhaps even going as far as to place a hand on her back and steady her as she steps up to enter a warehouse, is he thinking to himself something like, “if only i were braver, i could do things like this all of the time and without feeling guilty. better make this moment count”---or is his move an entirely subliminal one, something he does on instinct, almost without realizing that he has?

without having much hard evidence to go on, my sense is that we see a little bit of both options in play---that there are times when sara might purposefully and knowingly lean in close to grissom in order to flirt or fluster him or just see if she can get a rise or reaction out of him of any kind OR alternately because she’s yearning for some sort of tangible connection with the man she’s in love with (even if they aren’t officially “together”) and is willing to take what she can get, just like there are times when she simply acts on autopilot and does what comes naturally to her, placing her body close to his body, sharing his space because that’s where she feels like she should be; and ditto for grissom, who on certain occasions may be perfectly aware that he is breaching social politeness protocol with sara and standing at a proximity to her that is typically reserved for a significant other but on other occasions may have no conscious idea to just what degree and how often he gravitates toward her, like the tide to the shore or a moon in orbit of a celestial body.

certainly later on in the show, after they become an official couple, when they continue to be all up in each other’s business all of the time, they probably are more conscious of how close they get to each other while at work, knowing that they actually (finally) have something to hide.

still, they’re unwilling to change how they behave; even though by that point the yearning element to the behavior is moot (as they are finally able to be together and to express their attraction in other, more physical ways), they nevertheless remain drawn to each other and continue to invade each other’s space.

after so many years, it’s a very comfortable habit for them and something they just naturally do.  

thankfully, after seven years, their coworkers are so accustomed to their weird closeness that they don’t even realize that grissom and sara are by now a couple; they think, “well, they’ve always been that way,” and fail to realize the significance of what they’re seeing.

so.

with all of these in-universe points about the how and the why of the “no personal space” thing in mind, let’s get to your actual out-of-universe question---namely, the issue of whether or not standing too close is a propositional or a coincidental gsr mannerism.   

of course, the first thing jorja ever learned about her character when she first auditioned for the role was that sara was supposed to be grissom’s love interest, so gsr was really on the table from day #1.

or technically “day #2,” if we consider jorja only joined the cast after the pilot episode.

that so, theoretically, the “no personal space” trait could have been decided upon by the production team ahead of time---an instruction that billy and jorja were given, starting from the very first scene when sara appears in episode 01x02 “cool change.”

that said, romantic gsr was not often an object of direct focus during the first five-ish seasons of the show, or at least not on the reg, and, in fact, there was even a period of time following grissom’s rebuff of sara’s advances in the s3 finale when tptb considered dropping romantic gsr entirely and the ship was only saved by billy and jorja’s subsequent lobbying.

so because grissom and sara even stand close to each other in episodes where there are no ostensible romantic gsr notes and at times when the writers’ room collective had no active interest in pushing romantic gsr, either because they felt it was too early or too late for them to do so, i tend to doubt that the production team made any kind of proclamation right off the bat stating that grissom and sara should stand really fucking close to each other as often as is humanly possible.

instead, i think they probably experimented until they hit on something they decided was ultimately worth sticking with.

the first several instances of the gsr personal space violations we see in s1 may have grown out of a combination of on-set logistical realities and billy and jorja’s acting decisions. perhaps there was a scene one or two episodes in where the film crew wanted to do a close up and have both characters in frame, and in order to achieve the blocking they needed, they had to have billy and jorja stand closer together than they would naturally. maybe from that experience billy and jorja, having some sense of their characters’ connection to each other, decided to start sneaking in those touches or putting their faces close together whenever they had the chance, and that decision on their parts eventually caught on.

particularly in instances where there is no practical application for grissom and sara to be standing closer to each other than wet on rain (i.e., in long shots where there is more than enough space for them to stand separately and they aren’t looking at the same small piece of evidence or helping each other work), my guess---and, again, the operative word here is “guess”---is that what we’re seeing is an acting decision on billy and jorja’s parts, or, in other words, something that they undertook to do of their own volition and not necessarily because either the script or the direction required them to do so. 

since we know from past interviews that they sometimes conferred with each other regarding characterization (and even came up with their own take on the gsr backstory to work off of), one can easily imagine that at some point early on they sat down together and went, “okay, so part of this whole ~grissom and sara thing~ is that we’re going to have them constantly getting into each other’s space”---i.e., they may have made a conscious and mutual decision to have grissom and sara practically standing on top of each other at all times.

that said, i tend to think it’s more likely that that particular acting choice was more of an “in the moment,” “what feels right for the characters” kind of thing---or, in other words, that they never proposed this acting choice to either each other or anyone else; they just made it happen.

they’re both such talented physical actors who have an intuitive sense of grissom and sara’s mannerisms---how they inhabit space, their posture, their expressions, their tics, etc.---that it seems to me that they probably fell into the habit of standing close to each other naturally, knowing as they did (from the beginning) that grissom and sara were already attracted to each other.

while they may have gotten the idea due to how certain scenes were blocked or even at the suggestion of some of their earliest directors, they were likely the ones who really developed the space infractions and made them a regular part of grissom and sara’s characterization.

i won’t presume to guess which one of them began the practice, but i envision that early on during the filming of jorja’s first episodes as sara, there were probably times when they ran takes and one of them inched in closer than was “normal” to the other, and the other one noticed and started to play into it, inching in closer themselves, until finally grissom and sara were elbow-to-elbow, even though there was no logistical reason in the scene why they should be.

maybe after these initial takes they got notes from the directors or crew encouraging them to keep at what they were improvising and find ways to more fully incorporate that closeness into their interactions, but, nonetheless, i still suspect that this particular calling card has its roots in their incredible sense (as actors) of who their characters are and who they are to each other---that it’s a natural function of their off-the-charts chemistry together.

it’s a physical gesture that rings very true and something that makes sense for two people who are in a constant state of sublimating their desire for each other and denying their relationship its natural consummation. 

as canny as billy and jorja are about grissom and sara’s body language just on a general level---think of grissom’s nervous fidgeting with his hands whenever he is forced to talk about his feelings or how sara so often stands in a “defensive position” with her arms crossed over her torso as a barrier when she’s feeling triggered, both of which are really smart physical cues---i imagine that they just sort of understood that this is how these very strong, very present feelings that their characters have for each other leak out as they unsuccessfully try to repress them and do so in the form of these egregious, irrepressible personal space violations, happening all of the time.

of course, that’s not to say that the writers and directors never took those cues that billy and jorja originated and ran with them or put them into the show more deliberately as time went on and romantic gsr developed.

i certainly think that they did write toward the gesture in time---and i can even call to mind a few instances when i’m all but sure they did.

for example, in episode 04x08 “after the show,” i think that the writers and directors, by now conscious of the fact that grissom and sara usually stand just inches apart from each other during any typical conversation, looked at the scene in which grissom and sara argue over using the killer’s attraction to catherine as an investigative tool in the case and went, “we have an opportunity to use their body language to help tell the story here”---which is why we see grissom and sara standing several feet apart from each other, almost to the point where the distance between them is exaggerated, with sara’s arms crossed over her body in defiance (i.e., to show that there is friction between them, that they are not on the same page at the moment, that sara feels like she’s on the defensive with grissom, that there is a schism between the lovers, etc., etc.).

because standing so far apart is not typical grissom and sara behavior, when it happens in this instance, it serves to catch the attention of the audience and highlight the discord between them, which is of course a recurrent theme throughout s4.

another place where we see the powers that be purposefully playing up the grissom and sara “no personal space” trait is in episode 06x22 “time of your death,” when anthony caprice seems to pick up on their “couple-yness” right away and remarks on how “secret longings” carry a kind of electricity, often being much more visible than one might want. 

while there are probably any number of clues that might tip off a shrewd analyst of human behavior such as him to the fact that the two persons standing in his presence are carrying on a secret romance with each other---from their matching clothes to their guilty glances at each other when he starts talking about the subtle art of sussing out someone’s innermost fantasies---the way they’re standing has got to be one of the most telltale.

they don’t look like two law enforcement officials on the scene to take a statement.

they look like a couple on a date because they’re standing right goddamn next to each other, doing the body language equivalent of saying, “i’m with him/her.”

the writers knew as much, and they staged the scene with this knowledge very much in mind.

anyway, all of this discussion is to say that while i don’t think grissom and sara’s trademark personal space violations were something that was proposed by the production team from the start of the show, i also don’t think they were purely coincidental. there were undoubtedly production realities (blocking, sound engineering, etc.) that contributed to the phenomenon. there were undoubtedly directors along the way who said, “i want to see more of this.” certainly, billy and jorja made acting choices based on their understanding of the characters, which then (repeated frequently over time) became part of the fabric of those characters and their relationship with each other, to the point that, eventually, the show’s writers and directors began to write and stage scenes around either fulfilling or subverting the audience’s expectations that grissom and sara typically stand much closer to each other than is professionally appropriate.

in any case, the fact that grissom and sara are constantly so close to each other is one of my favorite things about them.

even at times when they’re not officially a couple---even at times when they’re at odds and their relationship is strained!---their attraction is so clearly visible.

they’re always so drawn to each other.

____________

once nick starts at the lab, he invites grissom out for beers after the first case they work together, because, after all, that’s just being polite, per texas manners---and, plus, he’s heard a lot about this famous but mysterious “bug man,” and he is eager to get his own read on the guy. 

(and, yeah, yeah, okay, he’ll cop: even though he’s only worked at the lvpd crime lab for a week so far, he already has a very deep-seated need to impress the most senior csi on his team, and he knows a couple of rounds on him couldn’t hurt anything in that regard.) 

grissom is polite enough in declining, or at least is not blatantly rude, so nick doesn’t really recognize that he’s probably more likely to win big at one of the strip casinos than he is to get grissom to accept his invitation---

---at least until catherine and warrick practically laugh him out of the break room after he tells them about the exchange.

“it’s never gonna happen, man,” warrick discourages him through chuckles.

“never?”

catherine smirks and claps him on the shoulder. “don’t take it personally, cowboy.”

still, nick keeps the faith.

his mother has always told him that a warm smile and firm handshake will get him far in life, so he doesn’t give up on inviting grissom to socialize. 

the invitations are innocuous at first---“wanna head to the bar?,” “join me at the diner, hoss?,” “i was gonna try out that new coffee shop. you in?”---but after declination after declination on grissom’s part, nick starts to up the ante. 

undeterred, he tempts grissom with tickets to sporting events and concerts, tries to get him to join in on short camping trips in the desert, and even offers to set him up with his landlady so they can go on a double date. 

in each instance, grissom refuses what nick’s offering, sometimes placidly, sometimes showing his annoyance.

despite grissom’s long streak of refusals, nick still isn’t dissuaded from asking and even diversifies his menu of temptations to include tours through museum exhibits, weekend trips to attend forensic conferences, and, on one occasion, the chance to go bungee jumping.

(“i got a coupon, man. it’d be wild!”)

though he is aware that some of his invitations are---how to put it?---avant-garde, nick still makes every one in earnest, sincerely hoping that grissom will finally, at some point, say yes. 

of course, his teammates seem to think he’s making jokes at their boss’s expense. whenever he is within earshot of nick asking, warrick rolls his eyes. catherine shakes her head and looks to the ceiling for deliverance. brass flat-out asks him if he’s nuts.

then sara joins the team, and the one time she witnesses nick hassling grissom to meet up with him after work---“hey, man, there’s a pool party at the wynn. heard the dallas cowboys cheerleading squad is gonna make an appearance. i’d love a wingman”---she gets weirdly huffy. 

grissom himself merely leaves the room without a word, no more or less perturbed than usual, but after he’s gone, sara glares daggers. 

“you are such a---,” she snarls in nick’s direction, but she never finishes her sentence; just slams her locker shut and stalks away. 

nick figures her reaction has more to do with her feminist sensibilities than with him teasing grissom, per se. 

after all, she is very tightly wound.

in any case, as nick starts to experience some traumas and himself becomes more uptight---nothing like a couple of near-death experiences to make a guy reevaluate the way he is living---he eases off from these more unusual invitations fairly naturally, as if he were taking his foot off the gas. 

he doesn’t altogether give up on asking, but he does change tacks. 

now it’s more the occasional “hey, rough shift, huh? i was thinking about maybe seeing a movie to unwind. wouldn’t mind some company” than anything more daring or unconventional. 

while grissom never does say yes, there are times when he gives nick these long looks, almost like he’s seeing him for the first time. 

“see you tomorrow, nicky,” he says, and there is a gentle note in his voice, even as he gestures for nick to shut the door on his way out.

and for a long time, that’s the long and short of the matter: nick asks, not because he’s trying to be a wise-ass but because sometimes he thinks that maybe, despite his reputation for being antisocial, grissom perhaps understands the loneliness that comes with this job better than anyone, and he doesn’t want to be remiss in reaching out. 

by now, he realizes that grissom will never accept any invitation, but somehow he feels that asking is the right thing to do, never mind that grissom will always turn him down. the very act of issuing the invitation is about decreasing the isolation in the universe; reminding grissom that he has people, if he needs them. 

and maybe it’s a little bit about nick reminding himself of that point, too.

in any case, nick doesn’t take grissom’s perpetual refusals personally. sure, if grissom actually did show up to something nick had invited him to, nick would be thrilled---shocked, to be sure, but also ecstatic. still, he doesn’t require that particular kind of validation to know that grissom is connected to him, not anymore; all of the times grissom has been there for him over the years, whether to save his life, have his back with the administration, or teach him how to be a better criminalist, mean more than grissom accepting any invitation to socialize off of the clock ever could.

besides, nick is well-enough acquainted with grissom by now to understand that bar crawls and backyard bbqs aren’t his bag. the man has a personal bubble bigger than dallas, and that’s all right. if he wants to keep to himself after hours, he has every right to, and nick won’t think any less of him because he does.

(of course, nick has to admit, he is curious. what does grissom get up to after shift? how does he fill his free time? is there any invitation in the world someone could offer him that he would actually accept?) 

and so nick keeps on making invitations while never once expecting grissom to say yes.

of course, it figures that grissom would decide to “pull back the curtain” just as nick became resigned to never knowing what lies on the other side.

the acquiescence happens after the team learns that grissom and sara are dating, not right away---and, in fact, not for many, many months afterward.

there’s a long while when both of them are absent from the lab, sara recuperating from her ordeal in the desert, and grissom taking care of her. then, grissom comes back to work, a few shifts here and there, and finally on a more regular basis. a few days later, sara returns to the lab, too.

honestly, the idea that grissom has any kind of personal life, much less one involving sara, takes a long while for nick to compute. 

and maybe that’s why grissom’s more-equivocal-than-usual answer doesn’t really register with him when he offhandedly offers an invitation for grissom to join him and whomever else from the team wants to participate in a day at the go-kart track.

“so, uh, rick, greg, and i were gonna head back over there and get some racin’ on. cath said she might try and make it, too. might see if i can’t drum up some more interest around the lab. maybe ask doc robbins, super dave? brass? and, uh, of course, you’re welcome to come, if you’d like.”

“uh, we’ll see.”

in their usual parlance, grissom often declines nick’s invitations with silence, sometimes a polite no thank you, and occasionally a less-than-polite goodnight, nick, said in a terse voice. this rare and singular we’ll see, spoken softly, should therefore catch nick’s ear as different.

but somehow, it doesn’t.

in the nine years that nick has known grissom, the man has never once accepted one of nick’s personal invitations to do anything not related to work. 

so to say that nick is surprised when he first spots grissom coming over to the racetrack, dressed in his civvies, looking so weirdly pedestrian and like just another one of the hoi polloi, would be an understatement.

and to say that nick doesn’t almost jump out of his skin when he notes, milliseconds later, that grissom isn’t coming over alone but with sara on his arm would be an outright lie.

he almost crashes his go-kart in his hurry to drive over to greet them.

and when sara cajoles grissom into joining the race---even after nick himself has failed to do so---it’s all nick can do to keep himself from overshooting the track.

somehow, the whole outing feels like a personal victory; after nearly a decade, he finally got grissom to step outside of the lab and do something fun with him, and to do so openly with his girlfriend in tow, no less.

in nick’s mind, that’s mission accomplished.

he couldn’t really hope for anything more, which is why the possibility that grissom will accept more invitations in the future doesn’t even really occur to him.

nick still makes the invitations, of course---by now, the asking is essentially reflexive---but he has no inkling, let alone expectation, that grissom will agree to any of them. their afternoon spent go-karting seemed so much like a one-time deal, like the culmination of a long project. could there really be anything more? he doesn’t dare to imagine.

that’s why he truly doesn’t think twice when he mentions to grissom that he and warrick are going to take greg out to a new club in celebration of him having solved his seventy-fifth case. the “you should come” leaves his lips thoughtlessly, no sooner said than forgotten.

two hours later, he may as well have never even said the words at all, as far as his memory is concerned. he’s sucking down his third frisco sour---and, okay, so the drinking isn’t exactly helping his memory much, either---crammed shoulder to shoulder into a booth with greg on one side of him and warrick on the other and two girls on the outside of them. he and warrick are talking up the blonde to their left when suddenly greg starts tapping his right arm.

“hey! hey!”

“hey, watch it, g!”

“it’s grissom!”

“huh?”

“it’s grissom! he’s here! look!”

between the booze and the throbbing bass of the music, the name almost doesn’t register for nick. he has to reach in the depths of his mind, and then once he has the id, he still can’t process what greg is saying; the words almost seem like gibberish. grissom who? grissom where? what’s going on? he stupidly follows greg’s pointing, peering out over the dance floor toward the entrance to the club.

and sweet jesus.

there, in his tucked-in shirt and dockers, with his hands jammed in his pockets, standing awkwardly under the colored strobe lights, is gil grissom, in the flesh.

he rocks back and forth in place, eyes combing over the crowds, searching, his expression purse-lipped and curious.

nick’s immediate reaction is to check his cell phone, wondering if maybe grissom has been trying to get a hold of them for a call-out.

but no.

he hasn’t missed any calls.

grissom isn’t here to summon them for work.

this is a social visit.

hot damn.

in truth, nick still doesn’t fully believe what he’s seeing until they have claimed grissom from off of the dance floor, retrieving him back to their booth; only as he sits pressed in elbow-to-elbow against the man does he fully realize that what is happening is real. his boss, the “bug man,” is here with him at a club, not so they can work a case, but because he wants to hang out.

“so, uh, it’s great you could come,” nick shouts over the pulse of the music.

grissom nods, seeming dazed by all of the lights and sounds. he’s slow to answer. “yeah, uh, you know, with sara working swing now, she said i should, uh, try and get out sometimes.” he seems almost embarrassed.

“so you came to the club?” greg is incredulous.

grissom shrugs. “i worked a double-homicide here once.”

warrick reaches over nick to prod his shoulder. “hey, man, what you drinking?”

in the next hour, nick learns three new things about his boss: first, that grissom likes bourbon; second, that he can hold his bourbon well; and, third, that he has a surprising repertoire of bar tricks.

grissom is in the process of captivating an audience comprised of nick, greg, and a few club girls who have sauntered over of their own volition with a riddle involving three matchsticks and a matchbox.

(warrick is on the dance floor with the blonde from before, doing his best to shake his divorce blues.) 

“if i light the horizontal match on fire, which of the two vertical matches do you think will burn first? left or right?” grissom asks.

nick is so busy considering if there is any possible scientific principle that might answer the riddle that he doesn’t notice that someone else has come upon their convocation, emerging from the dance floor and perching behind grissom’s seat at the booth.

he only becomes aware of this new person’s presence when she speaks.

“i know the answer.”

sara.

she leans over grissom and pecks a quick kiss to his temple---the first time nick has ever seen any kind of pda between them, even though their relationship has been public for months now.

“hey, sara!”

“hey! come on in! did you see warrick is---?”

“yeah, he told me you guys were over here.”

grissom initially reacts with shock at having been sneaked up on but quickly recovers when he registers who’s done the sneaking. a smile curls his lips. “no fair spoiling the experiment when you already know the results,” he warns.

“okay, okay,” sara says, miming like she’s zipping her lips before coming around to sit down by him in the booth.

she stays long enough to see the end of the trick---the horizontal match leaps away from the two vertical matches and burns up without catching either one of them on fire---and then tells grissom that they’d better get home. 

her prompting puts an informal end to the party; nick realizes he probably ought to sober up and get some sleep before the start of his next shift, and greg says the same. as greg braves the dance floor to ask warrick if he’s staying or leaving, grissom magnanimously offers to pick up the bar tab, claiming that since he’s the supervisor, lauding greg’s achievement is technically his responsibility.

“thanks, man,” nick tells him, feeling even more so than he did after the go-karting excursion like he has experienced some sort of triumph.

while grissom pays up and greg and warrick collect their jackets from the coat room, nick and sara stand outside on the curb, nick awaiting his taxi, sara awaiting grissom. it’s a cold night for vegas, and they sway against the brisk air, breathing in visible spates.

“thanks for giving him the nudge,” nick says, bumping his hip up against hers.

sara frowns, not following. “what?”

“thanks for telling grissom he should come out with us,” nick tries again. “it was cool that he showed up. think it meant a lot to greg. and, i mean, who knew that he was so fun to hang out with?”

“um, okay, for one thing, i knew he was fun to hang out with---”

“yeah, yeah, okay, lover girl---”

“---and, for another thing, i didn’t tell him he should come out with you guys. i actually didn’t even know about this whole, uh, club deal until after he was already here.”

“but he said you told him he should come.”

sara laughs and shakes her head. “what i told him was that he should find something to do while i’m at work or sleeping---‘cause, you know, opposite schedules now---and i was thinking that he’d play chess at the park or something. i had no clue he’d end up out at a club with you guys.”

in many ways, these last few months have felt like a long string of surprises for nick, where grissom is concerned. he has learned more about grissom’s personal life since last may than he had ever learned about it cumulatively before, and each revelation has somehow been more shocking to him than the last. finding out that grissom had a girlfriend was just the beginning; then came learning that that girlfriend was sara and then seeing them together for the first time. there was the racetrack, sara’s switch to swing shift, and, finally, today, grissom unexpectedly showing up to the club.

frankly, nick didn’t suppose that anything would ever top the sight of grissom bathed in strobes, sipping ezra brooks, teaching greg how to jump a match---

---but somehow knowing that grissom accepted this invitation without sara’s encouragement, of his own volition, is the best and least expected revelation so far.

a grin spreads over nick’s face and remains there until grissom exits the club, coming up to him and sara on the sidewalk.

“you ready?” grissom asks, and when sara nods, they start to walk away from nick, headed to wherever she has her car parked. 

“hey, thanks! see ya later!” nick calls after them, and, then, because he can’t help himself. “we should do this again soon! you free on friday? i’m buying this time! hey, boss, what you say?”

and maybe it’s only the bourbon, but grissom actually cracks a smile for once. he doesn’t answer with words, just shakes his head before wrapping his arm around sara and, with her, taking his leave.

nick shouts as he retreats, feeling warm despite the cold.

“hey, i’ll take that as a maybe!”