SIYIBI - a few paragraphs into chapter 4 (I’ll have to finish it later)
“She’s well aware of her neuroses, so her problem is not in learning what’s wrong. It’s in knowing that there’s nothing she can do to fix it.”
Were you a counselor at one point? I swear I just had this exact conversation with mine today (only in my case “it” was a specific person). This is one of the reasons I love Sara so much & I love the way you are so true to her & characterize her so well - she (and you writing) make me feel less alone (although my counselor has reassured me multiple times I’m not alone). Thank you.
hi, @chelsshearman!
i've definitely never been a counselor! in my outside-of-the-internet life, i'm a college english professor, so about the closest i get to anything relating to mental health (professionally speaking) is teaching hamlet.
today we covered hamlet's murder of polonius! my students had such a great discussion about what might be going on in hamlet's headspace during that scene. i loved hearing their insights!
nonprofessional that i am, i'm glad to know my writing on the subject still rings true to you.
i've said it before, but one of my favorite things about fiction is that it functions to decrease the loneliness in the world. there is something almost magical about the experience of inhabiting a character's thoughts and finding in them what is deeply recognizable to you as a reader.
to know something i wrote resonates with your experience in that way is such a wonderful thing for me as a writer.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 12/?
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle
Summary: Set in S4/S5. The story of how Grissom and Sara become a couple in Las Vegas. Canon compliant.
“She tries to account for what they are now: two friends—best friends, even—madly in love with each other but not together and never likely to be. Maybe the arrangement is okay, she thinks. After all, she’s been happier lately than she has been in a long time. Maybe just having his friendship again and allowing their love to breathe, though it remains unspoken and unacted upon, is enough. She used to assume that she needed the more tangible elements—the dating, the romance, the sex—which is why she eventually ended up with Hank, but the truth is, having those things didn’t fulfill her. Or at least not with him. Even before she knew that Hank had another girlfriend, her relationship with him was a wasteland. They weren’t actually friends, so all of the flowers and fucking in the world between them were meaningless. With Grissom, things are different. Of course, she would like the tangibles—would adore them, actually—but she can live without them, she thinks, she hopes, she supposes, just as long as she has his friendship. For them to be gracious with each other is what really matters; the most important thing. To talk on the phone with each other because they want to. To check up on each other when there’s been trouble. To sometimes just listen to each other breathing.”
Do you have any idea when the next chapter of your fic "Something in You I Believe In" will be released? I read the last chapter and wow, I'm really looking forward to the sequel! Btw, what an extraordinary fic! The best I've read to date!
hi, anon!
thank you for your very kind words! i'm glad you're enjoying the story so much.
since i have never once been correct when i have tried to guess how long it'll take me to update a fic, the best answer i can give to your question is just to say that i will update "something in you i believe in" sometime in the near-ish future.
i'm currently at work on the next installment of my au geek baby series "happy accidents," and i want to start posting that fic before returning to "something in you i believe in."
that said, i am committed to finishing "something in you i believe in," so i will get back to it sooner rather than later.
i am excited to unveil the next part of the story, as we're getting into mid-s5 "things are really starting to happen now!" territory.
in the meantime, thank you for your continued interest in the story! it really means a lot to me.
Not a pressure ask but are you in the teensiest tiny bit close to updating SIYIBI?
I’ve re-read it so many times. They held hands across the console!!!
GSR are so close, yet…
hi, anon!
so believe it or not, i have actually been working on the update all this week and making good progress, though i don't have an exact eta on when the chapter will be done.
i'm through all of the episode 05x03 "harvest" parts (which gets us to the end of everything that happened in the last grissom chapter), but i'm planning to go up through the events of episode 05x05 "swap meet" on this one, so i've still got some ground left to cover.
that said, i'm really motivated to get it finished so i can post—they held hands across the console! they’re so close! those two geeks just need to get over themselves and kiss, dammit!—and knowing that there's somebody out there eagerly awaiting the next installment provides even more "juice" that way, so thank you for the message!
it really does mean a lot.
i hesitate to make any promises on when i’ll actually have everything completed (just because i am a notoriously slow writer), but if you're interested, i can spare you a little sneak peek under the "keep reading" to tide you over, okay?
speaking of the handholding.
__
She questions if perhaps that’s what this new phase of them entails: redefining what’s allowable; fine-tuning their old rules. Out of hand, she knows there are still hard lines they’ll never cross—no saying the word, no sex, no going home to each other—but she also considers that it is in their power to decide what this best friendship means for them, even if what it means is a pastiche of what is platonic and what is not; if their classification of it ends up being something halfway between San Francisco and Las Vegas.
The trouble, of course, is that somewhere before the hard lines there exist several blurred ones. No saying the word, no sex, no going home to each other. But yes to holding hands. And what about kissing? Stupid to consider, she knows, but she can’t keep the curiosity from her mind as she arrives home and goes through her afternoon routines, eating lunch, showering, getting ready for bed. It’s a middle-school preoccupation, really.
Hi, can we expect an update from Something in you I believe in soon?
PS: I'm obsessed with this fic.
hi, anon!
i've been working on the next chapter a lot lately and making good progress, so i'd say i'll have it done relatively soon by my standards.
of course, "by my standards," writing tends to run pretty slowly, even when i'm being consistent about doing it, so it still may be a month or two yet before i'm ready to post.
and particularly as i'm going to be visiting my family for the next little while and not having much computer time/internet access while i'm with them.
until then, may i interest you in a sneak peek?
Sara’s computer search at first yields little. Alicia’s most visited site is iTunes, and all of her other bookmarks appear to be school-related—digital encyclopedia entries and an online homework portal. Only on further investigation, clicking through individual links in the browser history, does Sara stumble on anything more interesting—namely, multiple PDFs downloaded from a medical studies database.
The site is one that is regularly used by doctors and other healthcare professionals. While available to the general public, its materials are not made for laypeople outside of the medical profession, and especially not for a kid who hasn’t even taken AP Bio yet.
Sara can’t imagine why a thirteen-year-old would be seeking out this kind of advanced research, and yet Alicia’s presence on the site obviously isn’t the result of an accidental click, as there are numerous hits, all under related search topics: “organ transplant,” “organ rejection,” “kidney donation,” “kidney transplant,” “heart transplant,” “lung transplant,” “liver transplant.” The queries were made over a period of several days, and Alicia downloaded about a dozen articles, saving them into a folder on her desktop.
Sara draws the finding to Grissom’s attention, and he is just as puzzled by it as she.
He furrows his brow. “What is that? Homework research?” he wonders.
His would be a reasonable assumption if Alicia had pulled some basic definitions and statistics about organ donation off of Yahoo or Google, but Sara is looking at a page filled with detailed descriptions of blood phenotyping and chemical skeletal formulas of the type most students don’t start learning how to interpret until at least high school, if not college.
She knows Grissom isn’t looking at the PDF with her, so she clarifies what she means. “Maybe,” she says. But. “These are pretty detailed biochem and immunosuppressant citations. It's a little over a seventh grader’s head, don't you think?”
His response is automatic, a reflex: “I don’t know. I bet you were a pretty smart seventh grader.”
Muscle memory, the blooming joy that spreads through her chest. Muscle memory, the blush that flares over her skin. Muscle memory, the dizzy delight in him. These last few days, he has had her smile on a string, able to draw it out whenever he likes. Muscle memory, how he does so now again.
Over the years, he has given her so many offhanded compliments, and yet somehow even for their frequency, she has never gotten used to them—never come to expect them. He always takes her by surprise, and this time especially so, his words so different from those she was expecting him to say that it’s all she can do to let them wash over her like a wave.
This part is pure adoration, is wanting so badly to rise from her chair and pull him to her by the beltloops, to kiss that wonderful, charming man until he knows, until he knows, until he knows without any doubt—
I'm obsessed with Something in you I believe in. I read the fic two weeks ago, then read everything in you a03 pag, and now I'm reading for the second time. Can't wait for the rest of the story and I have so many questions...
hi, @inutilidadesbytamara!
thank you so much for your very kind words! i'm so glad that you're enjoying my fic. if you ever want to send questions about the story (either here or on ao3), please feel welcome to. i love talking shop! thank you for reading and for taking the time to comment. it's much appreciated. ❤
also, i've been working on the next chapter this week. i've still got a long way to go before i'm finished, but i am making progress, slowly but surely.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 11/?
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle
Summary: Set in S4/S5. The story of how Grissom and Sara become a couple in Las Vegas. Canon compliant.
“In childhood, Grissom had no trouble obeying when he was told not to touch. The only son of a gallerist, by the time he was old enough to walk, he had already learned to keep his hands clear of those precious things which his mother forbade him to tactilely examine: delicate weavings easily plucked apart, textured oil paintings a single fingertip would disintegrate, blown glass and intricate sculptures liable to shatter if knocked to the floor. He trusted her explanations as to why this or that object was for only his eyes to enjoy, and his trust also extended beyond expensive artworks to include other more mundane things: the hot stove, the silken blooms of her rose garden, an heirloom snuffbox that had once belonged to his grandfather, other people’s pets unless he had express permission, cookies from the jar before he had cleaned his plate of suppertime string beans. Back then, as long as a satisfactory reason had been given, he could deny himself from touching anything he wasn’t supposed to, no matter how tempting. But somehow his powers of self-denial have diminished over subsequent decades. He is forty-eight years old, and he is dangerously close to touching Sara in a way that would mean something. Everything, even.”
