Title: Stealing Glances
Author: Jeanine (jeanineiol.ie)
Rating: PG
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Feedback: Makes my day
Word Count: 654
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site Checkmate (http:helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.
Summary: Warrick watches Sara
Notes: For the LiveJournal Writer's Choice "breakfast" challenge. Thanks to chureezee for both the title and the icon!
Everyone on the CSI graveyard shift – and quite a few people who aren't – knows one thing about Sara Sidle, and it is this.
She can't cook.
Popular lore has it that there is little or no fresh food in her cupboards, that she lives on takeout and microwave cuisine, that her speed-dial set-up consists of every restaurant offering delivery service in a twenty block radius.
Everyone knows this, but Warrick's the only one who knows that it's not true.
Well, not entirely anyway.
Because, as someone who grew up in a B&B in Tomales Bay, Sara knows at least a hundred different ways to cook breakfast.
All of them are different, unique, served up with the ease of someone who's had plenty of practice at that job. Not only that, but all of them are delicious, though there's one speciality in particular, something to do with poached eggs and some kind of seasoning, that Warrick swears should be illegal, because nothing legal should taste so good.
The food may taste good, but that's nothing compared to the feeling that Warrick gets when he wakes to the smell of cooking wafting through the apartment. It's his second-favourite way of waking up, and on those days, he rises and dresses as quietly as possible, makes his way to the kitchen, hoping all the while that she won't hear him.
If he's lucky, if that happens, he'll have a few precious moments to steal a glance at her. Her hair is usually loose, curling around her shoulders, and she'll be barefoot, perhaps singing along under her breath to whatever happens to be on the radio. She'll be in a t-shirt and shorts, though sometimes, if he's really lucky, she'll have grabbed his shirt from the floor, slipped it on. The first time he saw her like that, he was surprised by how good she looked, even more by how much the sight turned him on, and he went to her then, took her in his arms and proceeded to distract her enough to let the breakfast burn.
Most mornings though, he doesn't do that, just stands and watches, loving the look of concentration on her face, the total competence and confidence with which she moves. It's not unlike the way she looks in the lab, or at a crime scene, his other favourite places to steal glances at her. Those, he thinks, are the times when he sees, not the façade that Sara puts on for other people, the prickly exterior she projects to the world, but the real Sara.
His Sara.
And when he's sated his appetite, when he can look no more, he crosses the floor to her, slips his arms around her waist and holds her from behind. Her lips curl up in a smile as she greets him, but she doesn't look directly at him, at the very most, throws a quick glance over her shoulder. Most of her attention is focussed on her cooking, and he settles for a kiss to her cheek, to her shoulder sometimes, before doing the only sensible thing he can do; get the hell out of her way. He sets the table, or pours them both orange juice or coffee, all the while talking to her, sometimes about work, sometimes about what they'll do after work, topics that run the gamut from the past to the present and, more and more lately, the future.
They talk and they laugh as they eat, occasionally sitting in companionable silence, and it is cosy and domestic and it feels more right than Warrick can possibly articulate.
So when he hears people talk about Sara and her lack of culinary ability, he says nothing to correct them, just hides his smile. It's just one more secret between them, and that's the way he likes it.
Besides, his mind is usually on other things.
Like what's in the cupboards for tomorrow's breakfast.