Title: Scars
Pairing: Warrick/Sara
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: None
Disclaimers: Not mine.
Notes: For the LiveJournal CSReports Scars challenge.
***
Sara's skin is flawless, an expanse of milky white without a mark on it. Not for her the childhood scars of falling from a bicycle, or tripping during a particularly enthusiastic game of chasing. Not even an appendectomy scar mars her skin, and Warrick knows this because he's spent long enough searching for one, has thoroughly enjoyed the exploration.
He knows though, that just because the scars aren't visible, it doesn't mean that they're not there. Just that they're on the inside, hidden from sight, thin veins of white that only ache every now and again.
There are scars for every time she said or did something that her parents didn't understand, scars for every time she was ever left out of something during high school, because it hurt, despite her pride in her science geek status. Some are more recent, from Vegas, the mark of every put-down, every slight, every time she's ever felt like an outsider in their lab. Some of them, regrettably, are courtesy of him, and that's a scar on his own soul that he has to bear. There are scars too from relationships, romantic and otherwise, one from Hank, several from Grissom, as well as scars that he knows nothing about, ones that he doesn't know the reason for, will never know the reason for.
He knows that they are there though, sees the effect they have on her when the tissue is pulled at, the hurt in her eyes lingering long after the incident. Just like he knows not to try to talk to her about them, not to force the issue, because Sara won't confide in him until she is good and ready, and sometimes not even then.
So he tries to ease her pain the only way he knows, by bringing his lips to her skin, literally kissing her better, by moving his hands to rub the pain away. And when she moves against him, eyes dark not with hurt, but with desire, when she moans his name – his name, his mind notes with a sense of triumph, no-one else's – he knows that he's succeeding.
That's when he smiles against her skin, and looks forward to the day that her scars won't bother her at all.
He knows it will be a long time coming, but that's fine with him.
She's worth the wait.