Every year, on this night, he celebrates: one glass ­ generally more ­ for every year that he was too afraid to approach her. It is no consolation that her marriage had ended; no consolation that she'd joined him in his cynical tradition those first two years, but had only appeared as a spectator for the last three; no consolation that her former husband was now interred in the cold earth: in many ways, this only succeeded in making his unacknowledged predicament worse.

Because it was still not him.

He seated himself heavily on his couch and set the bottle of scotch on the coffee table in front of him, tumbler loosely grasped in his right hand. His mouth pursed in consternation, he exhaled noisily and let his shoulders slump as he surveyed the physical manifestation of the wreck that constituted his emotions. Joyless laughter bubbled up from within but died before it could escape past his lips, a grim smile the only thing that remained. Grissom took a deep breath, forced down his lingering hesitation, and began, her absence furthering his resolve.

A sizeable swallow, then, for when Eddie had cheated on her ­ and, he amended, the fact that he had kept it a secret. The amber liquid burned a path of remorse as it flowed smoothly down his throat.

Another for the custody investigation; a third for the mortgage; four and five for when Eddie had shoved her against the wall and, he suspected, all the times he'd hit her that were, as yet, unconfirmed. He was only mildly surprised when he discovered that it was necessary to refill his glass.

Six, seven and eight were for when the bastard had died, leaving in his wake a traumatized Lindsey and a grieving single mother, and the fact that, despite himself, a portion of Grissom also mourned his passing.

It was that year that she had stopped drinking with him.

Nine for his inability to comfort her; the tenth rounded out his placidness in the gradual detioration of their friendship. The level of alcohol in the bottle decreased again; he stared wryly at it, his mind banally comparing the steadily decreasing amount to the opportunities he had to fulfill some of the expectations in his life. This time a cold chuckle did spill forth, and again he brought the tumbler to his mouth.

Eleven for all the fleeting chances and the absolute futility of regret; he would die of alcohol poisoning if he decided to drink to even half of them: hundreds upon thousands, every single one neatly categorized and catalogued, stored in the vaults of his brain and locked securely into his heart. His stomach clenched, though whether recoiling from the alcohol or in response to his train of thought was anyone's guess. Grissom paused, admiring the way the dim light refracted and reflected as it bounced off both the scotch and the glass, shattering and dividing.

Twelve was quickly swallowed before any more unfortunate parallels to his life could be drawn. Thirteen was just for the hell of it: Catherine hadn't even bothered to come this year.

And after that revelation he lost count, found he no longer needed reasons, and the alcohol continued to disappear as he drowned his hopes in a sea of poison.

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She slipped silently in the door, feeling like an intruder. If he noticed her entrance he gave no indication, and she clandestinely observed the bowed dark-grey head, breathed in the heady, powerful scent of hard liquor. Mozart's Requiem, she noted, completed the scene before her, and it was so masochistically appropriate that the irony of it all eluded her. Catherine approached tentatively, walking around to the other side of the couch and into his field of vision; his eyes flickered toward her and back to the glass in his hand, and it was then that she noticed the mostly-empty bottle resting benignly on the table. Her brows furrowed with distress.

"Catherine." But his eyes were directed at undiluted liquid: there was no ice. He was serious.

"Gil." She walked toward him slowly, head ducking and eyebrow quirking as her mouth parted with worry, attempting to gauge his state of mind. Grissom's cheeks were flushed, irises slightly glazed, and judging by the time it took for him to focus on her it was clear that he was drunk.

He dragged his eyes to hers, and Catherine drew in a stunned breath at the anger, bitterness, resentment and pain she recognized in his blue depths. His eyelids dropped shut, barring her from his emotions, and he swallowed down the rest of the scotch, breathing deeply as it scorched a line through his chest, bringing the tumbler to his knee.

"What are you doing here?" Grissom's voice was rough with liquor and alcohol-sponsored bravado.

She blinked hard, feeling as though he'd sneered at her, but he only leaned forward and poured himself another glass, hand trembling. Belatedly she realized that he hadn't offered her any, a fact that alarmed her almost as much as his uncharacteristically hostile demeanor. Nonetheless, concern overrode any fear she had regarding his antagonistic attitude and she moved toward him purposefully.

"I came to check on you," she offered in a conciliatory tone, seating herself opposite him on the coffee table, close enough to assert her presence but far enough to remain comfortable. He opened his eyes and considered her, eyebrow rising as a mirthless smirk spread across his face.

"Why?"

Catherine shook her head in confusion and shock, hair swishing as a puff of breath forcefully left her mouth. She rocked backward, physically trying to find the balance she sought in relationship to him, and he took the opportunity to gulp down another half a glass.

"Go away Catherine." The words were definitive, and she was chagrined to discover that, though a bit clouded, his gaze was still incredibly intense.

Determination filled her at the unspoken challenge in his eyes, and she straightened, hands bracing against the table on either side of her. Eyes narrowing, Catherine leveled a hard stare at him, lips pursed, then stated unequivocally, "No Gil. You're done."

She wrestled the glass from his grip with some effort, grabbed the liquor bottle and set both atop the wet bar, the clink! of impact harsh against the melodic tones of the orchestra. Grissom leaned against the cushions of his couch, scrubbed both hands across his face and let his head fall back, firmly pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He fought a losing battle with his emotions: he was completely aware that he was inebriated, and very conscious of the fact that he didn't want Catherine present, though he also did not want her to leave ­ he never wants her to leave.

But he never gets what he wants, does he?

A harsh bark of laughter tore from his throat, but he quickly smothered it as the knowledge that it had come from him filtered into his muddled brain. His eyes blinked open, catching immediately on Catherine's anxious face, the creases lining her eyes and the downturn of her full lips. Grissom slammed them closed, one thought eclipsing all others: she has to leave.

She has to leave. NOW.

"Shouldn't you be out screwing someone?" Grissom really didn't mean to utter those words, for them to sound so malignant, but she flinched anyway. He hadn't meant to hurt her ­ he never did ­ but he took comfort in the fact that, unlike the others, it was at least not his original intention. Resignedly he sighed, allowing his arm to come to rest across his eyes.

Aghast and hurt, Catherine reeled, stepping backward and away from him. He's drunk, he's drunk, he's drunk, was the litany that looped endlessly in her head, but she'd made that excuse so many times for so many men that it had long-since lost its potency.

But he wasn't one of those men, was he? And she didn't know if that made it better, or worse.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ­ I'm sorry, Cath." Her nickname: an indication that his defenses had fled with sobriety, made even more evident by the repetition and unfinished sentences in his speech, something highly atypical in such an articulate person. Grissom wearily lowered his arm back into his lap and laboriously pulled his head up from the cushions, moving as though it weighed much more than the average eleven pounds. There followed a moment of complete stillness, and then he once more unveiled his soul to her, darkened eyes boring into her own.

"It's okay Gil," she murmured, seating herself next to him, curving against the edge of the couch, and something within him snapped: a tortured look creased his brow and pulled at the edges of his mouth before it morphed into an insane grin that she thought more closely resembled a grimace.

"No it's not okay. It's never okay. You shouldn't be here, Cath. Go home to Lindsey. Leave." He was unable to keep the animosity from his voice and reached for his glass, remembering too late that she'd removed it. Too tired to protest, Grissom instead settled for leaning his elbows on his knees, contemplating his laced fingers and staring at his in-turned feet. He started, however, when her hands entered his peripheral vision, lightly clasping his.

Catherine wavered, uncertain if she should touch him, but he'd looked so utterly forlorn that she could not resist: deprived of his usual edge, of his microscope, of even his scotch, he was totally stripped of his defenses and vulnerable to her practiced scrutiny. The almost imperceptible shiver that ran through him as her hands alighted on his was nothing sexual; rather, it was a startled and panicked movement, and her heart broke as she slowly understood that it was because he was so very unused to physical contact.

That he was so very alone.

"C'mon Gil. Let's get you into bed." He was either too tactful or too apathetic to argue or pretend to have caught the possible double-entendre, but, she rationalized, it didn't really matter: Providence smiled so rarely on her that she'd learned to take what she could get and not question too closely the means by which it arrived. Grunting as he stood, Grissom found himself to be wobbly on his feet and was absurdly enraged, and Catherine, sensing his distress, draped one of his arms over shoulders to steady him, pointing them in the general direction of his bedroom. Somehow, before they had even managed to take a step, Grissom banged his knee on the table and cursed colorfully, another tell-tale sign of his tedious and drunken condition.

Catherine's lips pursed again as they lurched sideways and she encouraged, "It's alright, let's go. Let's go."

Grissom was markedly agitated by the time they rounded the corner and staggered into his bedroom, turning just in time for him to seat himself on the edge of the mattress. Catherine stooped to unlace his shoes, but he did not move to assist her. His hand came roughly down onto her shoulder, and surprised, she looked up to find him intently studying her with what could only be described as despairing wonder stamped on his expressive features.

"Why, Catherine?" He'd reclaimed his hand, withdrawn it from her shoulder, and the absence of its warmth caused her to shudder. She wouldn't look at him; she didn't even know how to begin to answer his plea. Endeavoring to out-maneuver him, she redirected the line of questioning to the task at hand.

"You need sleep." She pulled the second shoe off, refusing to look at him.

"No Cath. Tell me. Why?" His voice was boyishly stubborn in spite of the danger the subject itself held. She sighed in defeat, closed her eyes and patiently wet her lips, drawing a fortifying breath.

"Why what, Gil?" Her voice was low and gravelly, filled with an exhausted terror and entrenched in denial of the truth. She stared despondently at his gold-toed socks and her open, half-curled hands resting in her lap.

His hand was gentler this time as it caressed her cheek, ghosting over her smooth skin as he tenderly tilted her head toward him. There was so much bewilderment, anguish and love in his face that it hurt her to look at him and her mouth fell open, previously deep breath ending in a strangled gasp.

Grissom was about to speak when she broke eye contact, bowing her head and pushing herself up to her feet. Dejected, he let his shoulders slump and swung his legs onto the bed, allowing Catherine to cover him with a blanket. Rolling onto his side to face her, he tracked her movements as she repositioned his desk chair and stationed it closer to his bedside. Frustration and fatigue threatened to crush him: every year, without fail, she stays by his side, and every year he lacks the courage to finish his question because he knows intuitively that she will never answer. His mind started to drift, the hazy blanket of sleep fuzzing the edges of consciousness.

Catherine lowered herself into the chair, shifting till she found a comfortable position in which she could continue her annual vigil. Grissom seemed to be nearing blissful unconsciousness, features gradually relaxing from their hopeless expression to a more tranquil one. She will stay until he's sleeping solidly, as she has done for the last five years, but she will be gone by the time dawn's plush pink fingers languidly stretch across the Nevada sky.

She knows he won't ask.

But just as her thoughts became complacent, just as her guard began to wane, his azure eyes snapped open and sought hers. Caught unaware, she was unable to look away, transfixed by the purity and guilelessness of his gaze and the unadulterated love that made his eyes glow in the velvety darkness.

"Cath," he whispered earnestly, and his image blurred as her eyes filled with tears, "why won't you let me love you?" And his eyes slipped shut, and he was gone.

Her jaw had inexplicably come unhinged; incredulous, she couldn't believe that he had not only voiced the question, but had had the audacity to fall asleep directly afterward. The man was infuriating, and while she was angry and more than a bit incensed, another part of her ­ a scared, hopeful facet of her being ­ steadfastly refused to contemplate the heartfelt query, clinging to the mantra of `friend' and `Grissom' rather than the perilously promising qualifiers of `best' and `Gil'. Catherine closed her eyes and leaned forward, mirroring Grissom's earlier position, but when her chin hit her hands she was astonished to feel moisture pooling there, perceiving suddenly the saltwater that trickled down her cheeks, carving twin paths of love and agony into her pores and her memory.

She has no answer; he did not wait for one.

But this year, he asked.

And this year, when he wakes, she will be there waiting for him.

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