"Magnificent Lasagne and Artificial Worms"
by Kristafied
Canon, what canon? Set post Grave Danger; mostly diverges from canon at that point.
Sara/Nick Friendship, becomes Snickers
Rating: M (for language and eventual smut)
A/N: Not sure if the timeline of Nick coming back to work and Warrick getting married matches up with how I have it here, but let's just roll with it for now. Also, I've never been to Vegas, so all locations are completely made up.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I wouldn't have all this debt from grad school.
Tuesday Morning and the Previous Weekend
It was weird to be back on the night shift. Hell, it was weird to be back at work. Nick scratched absently at one of the ant bite scars on his neck, more out of habit than anything else. Overall, the night had gone fairly well; everyone had been visiting him regularly while he was out on medical leave, so they knew he didn't want a fuss made over his return to the field. Catherine was insisting they all go out to breakfast after shift, however, and although he was exhausted, he would have felt like an ass if he'd refused. Most of the night shift had gone on ahead to the diner; it was just him and Sara in the locker room at the moment, and she'd been quiet all night.
She hadn't been doing much real talking since they'd pulled him out of the ground, Nick mused. He hadn't noticed before; she had been there, in his hospital room, and later at his house, almost every day for at least an hour or so. She would bring him her vegetarian (and, though he hated to admit it, absolutely delicious) lasagne or eggplant parmesan, grumbling that he needed to eat well to feel better, and she usually had some cheesy sports movie she'd thought he would like, and they would sit on his couch, chewing companionably and laughing out loud at Major League, The Longest Yard, or Slapshot. He'd teased her one day that he hadn't known she had even heard of all these sports, let alone movies about them, and she'd just whacked him with a couch pillow and tossed him a copy of Cool Runnings. Nick grinned at the memory.
Out of all his friends, she was the only one who had never pushed him to talk about what happened, who had never attempted to discreetly (or in Catherine's case, not-so-discreetly) recommend a therapist who "might be able to help," who had never tried to commiserate or give him an awkward hug. She would simply call him once a day to see if he had plans, and if he didn't, invite herself and her pasta and salad and movies over for a few hours. After the movie was over, she'd help him with the dishes, make sure he had the leftovers properly stowed, toss off a casual, "See you later," and head home, or back to the lab.
Two days ago, when she'd called to check on him, he'd had news. He was dancing around his living room, not that he would have admitted it to anyone, when the phone rang. "Howdy!"
The amused snort at the other end of the line could only be Sara. "Well, someone's in a chipper mood tonight. You taking happy pills or something?"
"Don't need 'em. It is the end of cabin fever, my friend. I am officially cleared to go back in the field; I'll be in Monday night."
He laughed at her unladylike whoop. "Hey, Nick, that's great! It'll be nice to have you back." She paused. "We've, uh, we've all missed you, you know."
Still flying high, Nick hadn't been able to resist the tease, "How can you possibly miss me, Sidle, you're over here bugging me all the time!"
It was like a vacuum suddenly sucked all the air out of the room. He could hear it in the small sound of her voice. "Oh."
The silence was just long enough for him to inhale but not long enough for him to actually get words out. "Sar..."
She cleared her throat and talked right over him. "Listen, Nick, I'd better get going, I promised Grissom I'd be in early tonight. You, uh, you still have leftover lasagne in the fridge if you need it, right?"
"Sara, I'm..."
"Okay, good." She was speaking very fast. "I'll see you Monday night then." Her forced laugh sounded painful. "Enjoy your last weekend as a gentleman of leisure. Take care."
Nick stared at the phone in his hand and listened to the dial tone. Shit. He pressed the disconnect button. That had gone horribly wrong very quickly. For long moments, his eyes fixed on the phone, not really seeing it. Just as he moved his fingers to dial her back, the phone rang in his hand. It was Warrick.
"Hey, man, I heard congratulations are in order! What do you say we go out on the town tonight to celebrate? Sara said she'd cover me if I wanted to take off tonight."
"She did?"
"Yeah, I thought that was totally cool of her. She just called to tell me the good news and she volunteered. Girl's all right, you know."
"Yeah," Nick rubbed his eyes and thumped down on his couch. "Yeah, I know."
He'd barely had time for a shower before Warrick had been banging excitedly on his front door, and after that the evening was a blur. "We need to get you back on nightshift hours, man," had been the excuse to stay out drinking and listening to music until almost five a.m., something Nick hadn't done in years. Judging by the one-sided argument he overheard taking place on his couch at about ten o'clock the next morning, neither had 'Rick. After ten minutes of listening to, "Baby, I... C'mon, Tina, I was just out with Nick... We were celebrating... You were at work last night anyway... No, I'd never..." Nick was trying not to laugh out loud when Warrick knocked on his bedroom door, looking sheepish but striving for cool. "Nick, I'm gonna head out."
"Sounds like it." Nick snickered and pantomimed a bull whip.
Warrick grabbed a wadded-up towel from the top of Nick's hamper and whizzed it across the room. "Aw, shut up, man. Just wait till you get married, you'll see."
"Yeah, well, I think we're all safe from that particular disaster for a while yet."
Warrick had waved over his shoulder and headed for the door. Nick had fallen back to sleep until late afternoon, by which point he had convinced himself he needed to re-pack his truck with work necessities, do laundry, and put together his spare bag for his locker. He managed to ignore his guilty conscience and avoid thinking about Sara until he was packing his "lunch" bag Monday evening before work. Without thinking, he grabbed one of the plastic containers filled with a generous helping of her lasagne, and started to shove it into the soft-sided fabric cooler. He caught sight of the top of the little square and froze. She'd labeled it. He hadn't realized she'd done that. On the top, in her immaculate printing, were the date and the words, "Sara's Magnificent Lasagne."
His hands tightened on the plastic and he let out an involuntary huff of laughter. It was an inside joke. The first few times she'd brought over food, he'd rhapsodized about her cooking: "Sara, that's just magnificent! I had no idea you knew how to cook anything but take-out."
She'd pretended to be offended, but after that it had become a running joke: "I made some of my Magnificent Lasagne, Nick. Know anyone who might be interested in helping me eat it?"
His eyes prickled and he blinked, hard. She'd made it so easy for him. All those afternoons on his couch when she should have been sleeping, all those casual phone calls, all done without giving him any sense of obligation. Contrary to what some people might think, he wasn't usually blind, or oblivious. He'd figured out enough about her background to know she'd survived something pretty awful, although he didn't know exactly what. She never talked about it; Sara always held her emotional cards close to the vest.
Perhaps because of her personal history, she was the only one who'd handled his recovery with absolute grace. Maybe that was why he'd forgotten something he'd figured out years ago: underneath her passionate professional dedication and thorny intellect, beneath all the stubbornness and gun-toting fearlessness and buddy-buddy kidding around, Sara was terribly, terribly shy. She'd rather gnaw off her own hand than overstep her bounds, and until his kidnapping and subsequent recuperation had given the whole team a reason to check on him regularly, she had only once called him for anything other than work. With the exception of that one time after the case of the agoraphobic who was killed by her own sister, all the socializing they'd done had been initiated by someone else. Nick shook his head. God, he was stupid.
Nick put the lasagne in his lunch bag, pausing a moment to run his fingertip over the writing. He was at a loss. He knew he'd hurt her feelings, albeit unintentionally, but it had been so subtle, so much in the subtext of the conversation, that he wasn't sure how to apologize. She'd be mortified if he brought it up directly, and she'd probably deny she even knew what he was talking about, just to save face.
He thought about it all shift. Actually, the distraction of mulling over how to make up for his insensitivity gave him a welcome distraction when Grissom teamed with him for a suspicious auto accident that included a guy who had burned to death trapped in his own car. He'd caught one apologetic glance sent his way when Grissom realized the circumstances of the death, and nipped it in the bud. "It's fine, Gil. I'm okay." He was surprised to realize how much he meant it, and felt a weight he hadn't realized he'd been carrying slip from his shoulders. He could still do his job. He could still do it well, perhaps even better than before.
Nick hadn't seen Sara all shift, even when he'd followed the wrecked car back to the garage, which was one of her usual haunts, and it was the gut-tightening disappointment he'd felt when his voice had echoed unanswered across the empty bay that had started to freak him out. Since when was he disappointed that he didn't get to see Sara? When had she become such a part of his routine that he missed her? She's your friend, nimrod, he chastised himself, grabbing a jumpsuit and pulling on gloves. She's a good friend, and you know you let her down. Now what are you going to do about it?
The entire team had finished up around the same time, which Nick doubted was a coincidence, and Catherine had announced that Grissom was taking them all to breakfast. Grissom's head had snapped up from the file he was reading as he walked. "Huh?"
Catherine's cackles had trailed after her as she sauntered toward the lockers. "Meet you all at the diner!"
Warrick and Greg yelled at him to hurry up, but Nick dawdled over changing once he saw Sara slip quietly into the locker room. She gave him a quiet, "Hey, Nick," and a smile that missed her eyes, then turned her back to stow her vest. Their locker doors slammed shut simultaneously, which gave him the excuse he needed to make eye contact and grin, although more self-consciously than usual.
He held the door for her as they walked out, still not speaking, and Nick's brain continued to scramble for a game plan until they passed Grissom's empty office. He looked in and his eye caught on the Big Mouth Billy Bass, permanently silenced since Catherine had disabled the battery housing one shift when Grissom had been giving a lecture in Minneapolis. Without letting himself think about it, he blurted, "Do you fish?"
Sara jumped slightly; apparently she hadn't expected him to speak. She turned her head and raised one eyebrow. "What?"
Warming to the idea that was germinating in his mind, Nick grinned. "I said, 'Do you fish?'"
Sara shot back wryly, "What is that, a trick question? Are you working a case of death by flounder?"
"It's a simple question, Sidle. Have you or have you not ever grabbed a pole, baited a hook, and drowned a worm or two in the name of a fresh trout dinner?"
Both eyebrows were up now, but he could see her lips twitching. "Nicky, you know I'm a vegetarian; why the hell would I go fishing?"
"Aw, come on, Sara, you didn't spring fully-formed from the head of Grissom as a vegetarian. Besides, meat is murder; fish is justifiable homicide."
That did it. A laugh burst past her tightly pursed lips and she stopped walking and leaned against the fire door, chortling helplessly. "I LOVE that bumper sticker. I've been dying for an excuse to get one, and I think you just picked out your Christmas present."
Nick felt himself relax and grin even wider. "You still didn't answer my question, Sidle. You ever been fishing?"
"Nope, can't say I have. I've never understood the attraction to standing around getting eaten up by mosquitoes, sweating to death, trying to catch something I can buy at the supermarket in a far more palatable form."
Nick threw himself through the door to the parking lot, feigning a mortal wound and causing Sara to roll her eyes. He shook his finger at her. "Okay, that's it. After breakfast, you're coming with me out to Lake Mead."
"To engage in a little justifiable homicide?"
"Yep."
"Okay, you talked me into it." Sara grumbled, but he could see her shoulders had straightened, her chin was up, and the sparkle was back in her eyes. Nick smiled, quite pleased with himself, as they peeled off to their respective vehicles on the way to the diner.
Breakfast was a relaxed affair with lots of joking around and, at Greg's prompting, a round of stories of everyone's funniest rookie mistake. Grissom did in fact offer to treat everyone, although Nick was pretty sure he saw Catherine slip him some money with an unrepentant wink at Grissom's mock glare. Since he and Sara were the last ones to arrive, they ended up squeezed into edges of the booth facing each other.
Feeling particularly mischievous, and somewhat loopy from lack of sleep, Nick stretched his legs out under the booth to "accidentally" kick Sara, who gave him the evil eye the first two times, and then proceeded to bark his shin with her steel-toed work boots after his third attempt. Nick's yelp of pain and his shout of, "Dammit, woman, that's gonna leave a mark!" was good for several minutes of relentless badgering from Greg and Warrick and a satisfied smirk from Sara, who continued to primly eat her strawberry waffle as though nothing had happened. Grissom merely shook his head and reached for the butter dish, but Catherine lowered her fork, tilted her head to one side, and regarded Nick thoughtfully. "Footsies, Nicky? How old are you again?"
Warrick hooted and Greg snorted orange juice through his nose, which provided a welcome distraction from Nick's flaming face. Everyone but Grissom missed Sara's speculative, sharp-eyed appraisal of her blushing friend.
They lingered over their empty plates until Greg yawned, hurriedly covering his mouth with his fist. "Guess that's my cue to head home, guys." His expression sobered for a minute. "Nick, man, it's great to have you back. It feels like we're a real team again, you know?"
Nick extended his hand and Greg gave him a half high-five, half handshake. "Good to be back. Thank you guys for everything these past few weeks." Nick looked around the table, meeting their eyes one by one. "It made things a lot easier, knowing you all were there."
Warrick smirked at Nick and broke the mood. "All right, enough of this sappy shit. See you tonight." He paused to give Nick a fist-tap and ruffle Greg's spiky hair, prompting a chagrined, "Hey!" as the team filtered out to the parking lot.
"Hey, Fish Boy. You still up for that justifiable homicide you promised me, or are you going to wuss out?" Sara was leaning against his truck with her arms folded across her chest and an evil grin.
Nick shook his head at her. He was actually dying to go home and sleep, but there was no way he could back out of a challenge like that. "Fish Boy? You keep talking like that and I'll make you bait your own hook."
"What, you think I won't bait my own hook 'cause I'm a woman?" Now the gleam in her eyes looked outright dangerous.
Nick did his best to look innocent. "We shall see, Ms. Sidle. We shall see." She snorted and scowled at him. Nick smirked back at her. "Care to make it interesting?"
Sara shook her head. "I'm not sure who's a worse influence on whom, you or Warrick. Alright, Fish Boy, put your money where your mouth is."
"I don't like to bet money anymore – I learned my lesson on that one, watching 'Rick get into so much trouble." Nick took a deep breath and blurted out the first idea that came to mind, hoping he wasn't making an ass out of himself. "How about, if I win, you take me to dinner on Friday, and if you win, I take you to dinner on Friday."
"Dinner, huh?" Nick could see the wheels in her head churning away and stuffed his hand in his pockets to stop himself from cracking his knuckles compulsively. He waited. "Okay, but it has to be real dinner. No take-out, no paper napkins, and if I win, you can't eat meat."
Nick pulled his hands back out of his pockets, unable to resist one quick pop, so they could shake on the bet and get down to specifics. Nick needed to run home and get his poles and tackle box, and they both wanted to change clothes. "Meet me back at my place as soon as you're ready. We'll get you a fishing license at the bait shop."
