TITLE: Letting go.

FANDOM: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

PAIRING: Gil/Catherine

NOTES: writers_choice: drive

Because Jeanine doubted the Merc (Anatomy of a Lye). This had better be AU, because Catherine was married at this point in the series timeline.

“You sold it to ECKLIE?!”

“Catherine, this isn’t a big deal...”

“BIG DEAL?! YOU SOLD THE MERC TO ECKLIE!”

“You’re shouting.”

“Nice observation, Einstein!”

She huffs at him and turns towards the corner, and she can sense the smile playing on his lips. Catching her hand in his, he pulls her towards the door. She protests, gesturing at the rain, but he just shepherds her outside, the rain kissing their skin.

He unlocks the car and she sits inside warily, but he just moves to his side and turns the key in the ignition. The car purrs in delight and he coaxes it into gear, driving away into the muffled buffer of the darkness.

“Where are we going?”

He doesn’t speak, just stretches out one hand to cover hers but leaving his eyes fixed on the road. The car is oppressive, closing in, and she wonders how she ever liked it, why she was so desperate to keep it.

Then she realises part of her lives within this car, within its fabric and its scents. Oh, as a CSI, she knows for certain, little pieces of herself scattered all around, but in her heart she knows, and that’s what makes her gasp, run her fingers over the dash in wonderment.

They shared their first kiss in this car. She remembers his fingers as they gently trailed down her cheek, burning a path to her lips. He watched them intently and then leant forward, barely a brush against them but enough to make her heart jump, for its force to drive her back into the soft, yielding seat.

She realised she loved him here, on a drive like this. They were getting lost in the desert and her patience was wearing thin, but he turned and smiled impishly, declaring ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’. And the smile had warmed her like autumn sun, and she knew she loved this man in a way that was unstoppable, inescapable.

Soon, it would all be gone. Ecklie would take Gil’s place in this car, and it sickened her to think of him disturbing their delicately threaded memories and the love they had woven here, in this machine, in its womb.

The car stops and she realises that they’re outside Ecklie’s house. She cries out as she realises that was the last drive, the last memory, and she hasn’t truly lived a moment of it, caught in the past, in her memories. It’s then that she realises that’s why she must let go – too much lurking in the past can only propel them backwards, and Gil knew. He knew, way before she did, and it hits her once more than she’s fallen for a smart man.

She gets out without protest and stands beside him as he slips the keys through Ecklie’s letterbox. Then, holding out his hand, he waits for her to take it.

“We’ll walk home, make some new memories.”

She smiles, knowing this will be better than any drive.