Title: Something to Smile About

Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)

Rating: PG

Pairing: Sara/Warrick

Spoilers: Fight Night; also briefly for Stalker,

Feedback: Makes my day

Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.

Archive: At my site Checkmate () , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.

Summary: Warrick gives Sara something to smile about.

***

He likes to watch her when she doesn't know.

He knows that that sounds crazy, maybe even a little stalker-ish, eerily reminiscent of the whackjob that put Nick in hospital last year. But nonetheless, it's true.

He tells himself that he likes to watch her because that's his job as a CSI. He observes people, watches how they live their lives, how they interact with others, and every time he does that, he picks up something that could prove useful for the next case.

He tells himself that, but even as he chides himself for having such a Grissom-like outlook on life, he knows that he's lying to himself.

It's got nothing to do with observing people.

It's her. Just her.

It's not just because she's beautiful, though he thinks that she is. He knows that she doesn't, that she looks at herself in the mirror every morning and runs down a litany of the things that she wishes she could change about herself.

She doesn't like her hair, naturally curly, hard to control she says. But he loves it, loves to run his hand over it, his fingers through it.

She calls her long limbs gangly, observes her body with the disgust of the teenager who grew taller more quickly than all her peers, who still bears the mental scars of her coltish adolescence. He thinks that she looks elegant, graceful, and he's told her a hundred times that he's got no problems with her body. But since those words usually come when they're lying in bed together, his hands tracing lazy patterns over her skin as her head rests on his shoulder, she laughs at them. She tells him that he's biased, that he has to say that. He tells her that he might be biased, but that doesn't mean that he's wrong.

She doesn't like her smile, doesn't like the gap between her two front teeth that shows there, another remnant of her adolescence he thinks. It's not something she thinks about all the time, just occasionally she becomes self-conscious about it. He hardly ever notices it though, and when he does, he thinks it's cute.

He saw it when she arrived at the crime scene tonight, when she joined him in the boxing ring, going to the opposite corner, starting to look through the piles of equipment there. He took a moment to appreciate the irony of the situation; the two of them in opposite corners, like boxers getting ready to fight. They don't fight anymore, not the way they used to when she first arrived in Las Vegas. Nowadays, their disagreements are about cases, not personal issues; nowadays she'll back him up, instead of going for his badge. Back then, they were barely acquaintances, more like adversaries. Now, they're firm friends, occasionally more.

It surprised him the first time they tumbled into bed together, and he chalked it up to just one of those things, something they wouldn't talk about, never to be repeated. Thus he was even more surprised the second time that it happened. After that, he stopped questioning it, stopped wondering about it, just resolved to enjoy it when it happened. It's a constant amazement to him that they can get along as well as they do, that their arrangement has never caused any friction between them. He'd thought it might be awkward when she started dating Hank, but it wasn't, and he knows that the two of them aren't serious, couldn't be, because she's still found time to be with him in the last few months, and he knows Sara Sidle, knows she wouldn't cheat on someone she was serious about.

He's not sure what that tells him about how she feels about him.

Or rather he is, but he's not sure he likes how it makes him feel.

So he watches her, under cover of work, in the hopes that he'll find the clue that unlocks the mystery that is Sara Sidle.

Of course, when that day comes, he's not so sure that he'll know what to do, but he hopes anyway.

He casts a quick glance over at her, and she's still there, smile painted to her face, and he stifles a smile of his own, turning away so that she won't see him and take umbrage. He'd been more than a little nonplussed when she'd straightened up, holding the spit bucket away from her. He hadn't been able to understand what was so funny, and he'd been even more confused when she'd told him that smiling suppressed the gag reflex.

In the two years that they'd been working together, he'd never once seen Sara grossed out by anything, be it a decomp in a duffle bag, fecal fat from a ruptured colon, or close exposure to Conrad Ecklie. He'd thought she had an iron constitution, and added the fact that she had a weakness to his list of things he knew about her.

He'd played the gentleman, though he would have done it for anyone, asking her if she wanted him to take it. But she was stubborn, told him that it was all right, that she'd handle it. She wouldn't want to give in in front of anyone, not even in front of him, wouldn't want it to be taken as a sign of weakness. He'd double checked though, asking her if she was sure, and she'd nodded, that Joker-like smile still fixed on her face. "Mind and body, right?" she'd asked, throwing his own words back at him, and he'd turned away with a smile, leaving her to it.

She's still there now, still smiling away, but she jumps, and he does too, startled out of his thoughts by Grissom's voice on the other side of the ropes. Checking on how far along they are, he tells them that he's going back to the lab, taking whatever evidence they've bagged so far with him. If he notices Sara's fixed smile, he doesn't comment on it, taking the bags and leaving, his last words an instruction to them to go to the hospital, talk to Molina there.

They nod in perfect unison, the dutiful protégés, and once he's gone, they go right back to the business of sorting through the ring. He keeps an eyes on her though, and he doesn't miss the slight relaxing of Sara's shoulders once the dreaded spit bucket and its contents are gone. Her smile, seen in profile, becomes softer, gentler somehow, her whole body screaming contentment. She looks like a woman completely immersed in her work, a woman who's doing what she was born to do.

This is his favourite time to watch her.

Because this is when he sees Sara, the real Sara. Not the face that she puts on for the rest of the world, not even the face that she shows to the rest of the graveyard shift. Here, like this, he gets to see the essence of Sara Sidle, and it's the same face that he sees when she slumbers in his arms.

Those are his other favourite times to watch her.

She straightens up with a groan and a stretch, turning to face him. She's finished, she tells him, looking him up and down, asking him without words if he's finished too. He takes great delight in telling her that he finished a couple of minutes before her, teasing her about being a slowcoach. She rolls her eyes, making a comment about how they should get to the hospital before Molina leaves, or worse, lawyers up.

He can't fault her wisdom, so he climbs through the ropes, sure footed as a cat, turning and reaching up to steady her as she climbs down. He thinks that she might object, but she doesn't, and when she turns to face him, her hands are on his forearms, his hands resting lightly on her hips. She looks up at him, and he glances around quickly, realising that both Brass and Grissom have gone, that the fight personnel are nowhere to be seen, that even the cleaning staff have been denied entry until the two of them are finished.

They're all alone in this big room, and he's standing close enough to her that he can feel her breath on his lips.

He should be stepping away, but he can't stop looking at her.

She smiles, and it's more genuine than anything he's seen so far tonight. It's a real smile, from the real Sara, and it's just for him. "What are you doing?" she asks, but she's not moving away either, and his answer comes without thought. It comes in actions, not words, as he pulls her closer to him, bending his head and pressing his lips to hers. His hands don't move from her hips, but hers are sliding up his arms, resting for a second on his shoulders, then sliding down his back, and she's not resisting, in fact, she's helping the kiss along.

His head is swimming when he pulls away, and he knows that that's probably not the most sensible thing that he's ever done, but he really doesn't care, especially when he sees that smile, that wide gap-toothed smile that he loves to see, lighting up her face.

And that's when the words come, when he tells her his honest answer.

"Giving you something to smile about."