Title: Poet in my Heart
Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
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.
Notes: For the LiveJournal Writer's Choice "Stage" challenge
***
Sara is not, by nature, a superstitious person, despite her mother's best efforts to inculcate in her such beliefs. She's always been a realist, a pragmatist, never bought into any of her mother's crackpot notions, only believed the evidence of her own eyes.
She's grateful for that now, and she walks around backstage at the Pavilion Theatre in Las Vegas. It is show time, so usually this would be a thriving hubbub of people, but not tonight, not since the headline act was found dead in her dressing room three days ago. The place has been closed down, emptied and processed to within an inch of its life, but as they're no further to finding out who killed her, they're not lifting the crime scene tape, and they're going over the place one more time.
Hence, the place is quiet as a tomb, dark and dusty to boot, with lights and sets standing abandoned, some covered, some not, looking almost like ghostly centurions guarding the murderer's secret. Sara can hear each thump of her footstep as she walks, can hear the echoes reverberating through the air, adding to the whole ghostly ambience. It's as if she's the only person left in the world, as if she's Alice, fallen down the rabbit hole, waiting to be found.
Sara is not, by nature, a superstitious person, and she's going about her job as best she can, but she can't help it – this place is really freaking her out.
She jumps a mile in the air when she hears music filling the auditorium, and her hand automatically goes to her gun as she pivots in the direction of the sound. Almost immediately though, she relaxes, because she recognises the sound of a piano being played, and she also recognises the song that it's playing.
It doesn't take a genius to work out what's going on.
Biting back a grin, she makes her way to the stage, seeing there what she knew she would; an empty stage, an empty auditorium, but a not so empty orchestra pit. She can see, sitting in profile at the piano, the only other person in the theatre besides her, a look of intense concentration on his face as he picks out the chorus of Fleetwood Mac's "Sara", a song that he would never admit to anyone he knows, but that he's taken to playing, or humming, to get her attention.
As she walks, her footsteps echo through the auditorium, and his lips twitch in a grin, but he doesn't look up, doesn't speak, and nor does she because she doesn't want to break the spell. Instead, she sits on the edge of the stage, her legs swinging down into the pit and she looks at him, commits the sight to memory.
He's not the man she thought she'd fall in love with in Vegas, and she surely never thought that he would fall in love with her. But she is in love with him, and she believes, from the evidence of her own eyes, not to mention her heart, that he's in love with her too.
They sit like that for a number of minutes, long enough for him to work through a couple of verses and choruses, then he speaks, his voice low and teasing. "You just gonna sit there?" She lifts an eyebrow and he shrugs with the shoulder nearest to her. "You could at least dance for me."
She laughs at that. "You've got the wrong CSI," she reminds him, and his green eyes shoot lasers into hers, the music, the chorus this time, never stopping.
"No I don't."
The words are heavy, but welcome, and she feels a blush coat her cheeks, tries to regain the high ground with a joke of her own. "You just can't resist a piano, can you?" Because this is far from the first time she's heard him playing, not even the first time she's caught him playing at a crime scene, but if he's embarrassed by it, he doesn't let it show.
"It's a beautiful piano," he says simply, and she doesn't know enough about pianos to say differently, but she will admit that the shiny ebony of the wood, in such contrast to the pale ivory of the keys makes it a damn handsome instrument. Not as handsome though, she finds, as the long fingers that dance across the keys, unmistakably tender, light as a lover's caress. She can't help but remember all the times those hands have danced across her skin, just like that, and her stomach swirls pleasantly in reaction, the sensation doubling when he adds, "Besides, it's not the only thing around here that's irresistible."
She laughs again, more to cover up the effect his words and the music are having on her than to indicate amusement. "You just have to have the last word don't you?"
"That's why you love me," he says, his tone light, his eyes dark as they meet hers, and she feels a smile, slow and brilliant, lighting up her face.
"Yeah," she tells him, her voice unaccountably husky. "That must be it."
For the next few moments, they communicate by smile and music alone, then he clears his throat, his face back to business, even if his fingers still play on. "You find anything?"
She shakes her head. "Not to do with the case."
"We should probably head back then." He sounds like he's looking forward to it as much as she is, and she shrugs.
"It's not that late," she tells him. "We could get lost for a while…"
"I like that," he replies, shooting her a quick grin, continuing to play. "I like that."
Sara doesn't say anything, just stays where she is, closing her eyes as the strains of music wrap themselves around her, and it's like they're the only two people left in the world.
She lets herself get lost in his music, in him, and she hopes she's never found.