This is part of a story that I had started writing years ago and have always thought about putting online but have been hesitant. It's just a short piece, a setup for something much longer. I decided to put this up to see what people think about it and if it goes over well I will put some more of the story up here. Basically, this is a piece about Sara and Nick and the dance they do. Please read and (hopefully) enjoy. Feedback is always welcomed.

I met Sara Sidle the day bodies were falling from the sky in Vegas. It was one of those typical hot, sunny Vegas mornings that tourists complain about and the locals are just accustomed to living through. A reported suicide was keeping out of bed that morning. Instead of getting my forty winks I was entertaining the masses with one of Grissom's experiments.

Cue the bodies falling from the sky.

I was able to meet her after climbing down from the clouds and I knew right away that she was someone I wouldn't soon forget. I don't know what it was about Sara Sidle that made me develop feelings for her, perhaps it was that way she strode into our scene with such confidence, or maybe it was her beautiful face, or that smile. Whatever it was I knew right then that I was hooked.

Here we are now, more than five years after Sara's arrival in Las Vegas. We've each had our fair share of ups and downs, sometimes it seems like there are more downs than ups, but we're still going, still surviving somehow. I look back on the past months and years often and sometimes it's hard to believe that we've overcome some of those things- me being buried alive and Sara being attacked in the mental institution and being forced to face the demons from her past. I also watched her try to make something more out of her relationship with Grissom with no such luck. She's thrown herself at him more times than I can remember, with each time having a similar result. It angers me that he does it to her, making her feel like he wants something with her but dropping her the minute things get too serious for him.

I've still got those feelings for Sara, they're even stronger now than when I first met her. She was on my mind most of the time while I was buried in that plexiglass coffin. I thought about all the things that I wanted to say to her for years. For the first time in my life I felt honest-to-god regret for things that I wished that I had done but was too much of goddamned pansy to follow through with and I silently begged and pleaded to be given another shot just so I could tell her the things I was thinking and feeling every minute of every day. I wanted to escape from that coffin and pull her into my arms and love her the way that she deserved.

I wanted to feel her slight frame against my chest, her head resting on my shoulder, my fingers buried in her silky chestnut tresses. I like to believe that my thoughts of her kept me alive while I was six feet under in that claustrophobic prison being eaten alive by fear.

Things don't always happen the way we want them to, however. I was yanked back into this world and suddenly thrust into a whirlwind receiving attention from anyone and everyone. My family and friends watched me like hawks, taking every misstep I made as a symbol of my plunging into a deep depression. Sara retreated. She began to tiptoe around me, treating me like I was fragile and was going to break as a result of anything she tried to say. I held onto my feelings, afraid to tell her the things I many times I've wanted to make a move, ask her to grab a drink or go out for breakfast but I've backed down before asking her because I'm afraid she'll decline.

It's been a few months since I was rescued from my premature burial and I'm done with waiting, done with tiptoeing, done with being coddled.

Maybe it's time for me to take a shot. Maybe it's time to go all in for Sara Sidle.