When Catherine and Brass were gone, Sara met Grissom's eyes and smiled slyly. "Game on."

"Five minutes. I'm going to make you some tea first," he told her, and before she could respond he was gone.

"How domestic of you!" she remarked when he handed her the steaming mug a few minutes later.

"I try." He sat down on the couch, leaving a generous amount of space between them, and looked down at the game board. "So, you want to make the first move or should I?"

There was a uncomfortable pause as they both tried to pretend there was no double entendre in his words.

"You go first," Sara finally said. "Take the initiative."

"Right." He studied his tiles for a minute, then smiled. Placing an S on the center square, he added L-I-N-K-Y, carefully aligning each tile. "Double letter score on the K!"

"Slinky? Brand names aren't allowed," she reminded him.

He selected six new tiles from the bag. "It's not a brand name. It's an adjective. As in, 'a slinky dress'?"

"Oh." Wondering why she hadn't thought of that before opening her mouth, she directed her attention to her tiles. "Aha!" she exclaimed a few seconds later. "Building on that theme..." Underneath the S from Grissom's first word, she added A-T-I-N-Y.

"A satiny, slinky dress, huh?"

"Exactly."

"Hmm." He eyed his new selection of letters, noticing that it presented nothing as simple as his first hand had.

"You going to stare at the board all day," Sara teased after a few seconds, "or are you going to make a word?"

In response, he put an F three squares above the Y in slinky. "If we're going to keep to a theme..." he said with a grin, adding an O and an X to make foxy, "then this is going to be an interesting game."

"Foxy can't describe a dress, Grissom."

"Maybe not, but it can describe the woman in the dress," he said, keeping his eyes on the board. "And make sure you write down that the X was double-scored."

"Oh, so we're going to play like that, are we?" she said, challenge evident in her voice. "Fine." She plunked down A-L-O-O to the left of the F on the board. "If she can be foxy, then she can also be aloof. And that's a double word score."

"Indeed she can," he said coolly. "And also..." He put an S-C-A-R before the Y of satiny.

"Scary? You've got to be kidding me! You can't use that to describe a woman wearing a dress."

"No?" he asked with raised eyebrows. "How about if the woman's out of the dress?"

Sara opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. After a few seconds, she admitted, "You have a point, there."

"Of course I do."

"But what happens when she sees that he thinks she's scary?" Sara said, laying down O-B under the S of scary. "Double on the B, so there."

"The woman shouldn't be so upset," Grissom advised. "Being scary doesn't always equal being repulsive. Maybe he doesn't mean any harm." Without further explanation, he built contrite off of the T in satiny. "Bingo."

Sara's eyes narrowed. She wasn't sure if there were really two levels to this game or if her overactive brain was just reading too much into things. Where should she go from here? "So he's contrite, but he still thinks she's scary? Doesn't sound too great for her. And don't gloat over your score, it's rude." She put R-U-E-L under the C of contrite.

"He's not trying to hurt her," he said, scanning the board. "Maybe he's just unsure about what to do with her." Giving her an inscrutable look, he lined up C-H-I-C-K-E before the N of contrite. "Double word."

"You have got to be cheating! There's no way you could be getting all those doubles just by luck!"

Grissom smiled. "Planning, Sara. You have to plan ahead if you really want to rack up the points." He nodded back to the board. "Your turn."

She sighed and examined her options. The board was getting crowded and her letters sucked, so it took her more than a minute to spot the right move. Watching him out of the corner of her eye, she spelled K-I-L-L-J-O-Y off of slinky. "One person's chicken is another person's killjoy, so double word that, buddy!"

"Forty-two points," he said, giving her a look of approval. "Keep going like this and you just might catch me."

"Hah, you'll never allow that. You'll figure out a way to block me."

"Perhaps." After thinking for a moment, he slowly put O-V-E after the L of her newest word. "It's a frightening thing," he told her, staring at the board but not pointing out the triple-letter score his V rested on. "Maybe he doesn't want to hurt her."

"Maybe he needs to stop worrying so much about what he's doing and start trusting her." Without looking at him, she spelled F-A-I-T-H off of chicken. "Triple."

With almost no pause, he laid R-I-S before the K in chicken. "Too many things could go wrong."

She spelled C-L-U-E-S just as quickly, saying, "Evidence doesn't lie. You should listen to it when it's there."

"You're right," he said, sliding in T, R, and another T to spell truth. "But you have to remember, he's human and thus prone to failure."

"He doesn't have to be perfect, you know. She knows him and she knows how the world works." She built R-E-A-L-I-T-Y off of his truth.

"Maybe she doesn't know reality as well as she thinks," he said, laying an S on a triple-word square and spelling S-K-E-W-E-D.

A small smile crossed her face. "How would he know?"

"He understands her."

P-R-O-O-F, she spelled. "You'll have to present some of this," she said, gesturing to the letters she had just put down, "before I buy that. Oh, and that's a triple-word score."

Taking his eyes completely away from the board for the first time in the game, he studied her face, searching for a hint of what she wanted. When he couldn't find one, he dropped his eyes again and spelled out H-O-W, then looked up at her and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

" 'How,' what?" she said, unable to interpret the look on his face.

"How would he prove it?"

Sara blinked deliberately, trying to break the hold his eyes seemed to have on hers. "He'd have to be honest with her, for one thing. He'd have to be willing to talk to her and let her talk to him."

None of those things sounded outside his capabilities. "Is that it?" he asked.

She shrugged. "It would help if he didn't think she was scary. If he enjoyed spending time with her."

"Anything else?"

She tried not to show the unease this conversation was causing. "Well, he would have to find her attractive, too."

"Attractive," he echoed. "And how would he go about proving all those things?"

"I don't know; I'm not a man," she said stiffly.

"You have no idea?"

"He'd have to do his own thinking when it came to those things, not rely on her to provide the answers."

"What if he's hesitant to try those things without knowing if she'll be open to them?"

"You...I mean he...could always just try it; depend on his intuition to tell him if she's listening."

"So you think he should just...jump in with both feet?"

She gave him a small smile. "It's kind of hard to jump in with only one foot. It's got to be either both feet or no feet."

"Both feet," he murmured; then, with new confidence, "Sara?"

"What?" she asked, her interest caught by the change in his tone.

"I did carry you before. Out of the bathroom, I mean."

She nodded. "I kind of figured. But thanks for being willing to tell me."

"Don't you want to know why I did it?"

"Uh...well, do you want to tell me?"

He shrugged and leaned back against the couch. "Yes, but still...it's kind of embarrassing."

"How is it embarrassing?" she asked, slumping back too, so that her position matched his.

"Because I didn't have to do it. Like you said, I could have woken you up."

"Ok." She elbowed him gently, trying to shake him out of his reticence. "So why did you do it?"

He couldn't hold back a rueful smile. "Because I wanted to, and there was no one around to notice if I looked stupid."

"Why would you look stupid?"

"Well...what if I dropped you?"

"I probably would have woken up and kicked you with my good leg. But that doesn't involve you looking stupid, at least until after I kick you."

"I would have felt stupid, anyway."

"Well, you just told me the truth, and you still don't look stupid. So relax!"

He cocked his head to the side, unsure of her meaning, and said, "That's it?"

"That's what?" she replied, confused by his sudden departure from the topic of kicking.

"That's all you have to say about me carrying you for no reason other than because I wanted to?"

"Uh...yeah." She twisted around so her back was against the arm of the couch and she could lay her leg straight across the cushions. "You were afraid I'd faint or something?"

"No, I was thinking more along the lines of more kicking."

"Well, I promise not to kick you, ok?" She paused, looking thoughtful, and added, "Not to kick you for this, I mean. I reserve the right to kick you for other, future things."

He smiled weakly and tried to think of something else to say that would sound good, but before he came up with anything she shocked him by saying, "I was only wearing a t-shirt."

Gulp. "Yeah..."

"It didn't cover much. You must have...looked at me."

"No," he denied hastily.

"You didn't?"

"I wouldn't do that to you," he said, perfectly aware that he was lying through his teeth.

"You touched me. When I woke up, your arm was wrapped around me. But you didn't look?"

"I, uh...well, I mean, I might have caught a glimpse, but I didn't purposely look at you..."

"Why not?"

He could only stare at her for long seconds. "Why...didn't I look at you?" he finally managed.

"Yeah."

"Because...well, because it would be...crude. Inappropriate."

"To look at me?"

"To look at you without your permission."

She thought about that for a moment. "So if I gave you my permission, you would have no problem looking at me?"

He blinked, taken aback. "Uh..."

"If you're not interested, you can say so," she assured him, trying to sound unconcerned.

"Interested?" he parroted.

She looked at him warily. "Am I jumping to conclusions, here?"

Completely off-balance, he hesitantly asked, "What conclusions?"

She rolled her eyes. "Never mind. I guess I was."

"No, answer me. What conclusions?"

"It's nothing, Grissom."

Leaning forward, he met her eyes and said earnestly, "I obviously offended you with my lack of a response to your question, so it would be really helpful if you could just give me a prompt...so I know for next time?"

She sighed. His argument made sense, but she hated having to open herself up and risk getting nothing in return again. "I thought maybe you were interested. In...me. It seemed like it, when we woke up and during the game just now. But since I obviously just leapt miles ahead of whatever you were thinking, I figured out now that I was wrong."

"But you weren't wrong!" he blurted.

"I wasn't?"

He shook his head. "No. It's just that you caught me by surprise with your question."

There was a long silence during which their eyes locked, each of them trying to read the thoughts of the other.

When Sara spoke it was in a mere whisper. "So," she said hesitantly, "you...are?"

He nodded, but remained quiet for a few more seconds, scanning her face for signs of...anything. Finally, without moving from his position at the opposite end of the couch from her, he said, "I looked. I'd look again. I'd probably shamelessly examine any part of you I was allowed to - mental or physical."

"Oh." She smiled. "In that case...what part do you want to see today?"

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A/N: Word and letter placement/scores should be correct (yes, I'm a dork and broke out a copy of the board to build their game), but for the sole purpose of making my life easier, I disregarded how many tiles of each letter are actually in a Scrabble set and used as many of each as I needed to.

A/N 2: Is this the end? I really don't know. I feel like I've reached a resolution point where the original storyline is finished. I could keep going, but it would probably metastasize like MPL ended up doing, so I think for now…

THE END