No More Roses
by Kristafied
Rating: M (for language and smut)
A/N: This is the second part of the Magnificent Lasagne series. This picks up literally where part one leaves off, but it is told from Sara's POV as well as Nick's. This series started after the events of Grave Danger and diverges from canon at that point to become pretty much completely AU. If you haven't read Magnificent Lasagne, this story will not make much sense.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I wouldn't have all this debt from grad school.
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Very Early Sunday Morning -- Sara
Sara caught up with Grissom as he was lifting the hatch on the back of the Denali to place the evidence inside. She scoped his backside, mostly out of habit, as he bent to give the box a final shove. For a middle-aged, bow-legged entomologist, the man could move quickly when he wanted, and clearly, he was hell-bent on getting back to the lab.
Without turning to look at her, he slammed the hatch and trundled over to the driver's side, jingling his keys from his pocket as he went. Sara sighed. Oh, well, let the silent treatment begin. For all her tough talk to Nick, and to Grissom on the phone earlier, Sara still cringed at the awkwardness which was thundering across the skies of her personal forecast.
Deciding to let Grissom get over his snit at his own pace, Sara stared out the window at the lights flickering past. What a week. What a month. Her lips twitched. What a decade, really. She had loved Grissom for so long that she'd forgotten what not loving him felt like.
It was like a chronic ache that she'd learned to work around, one of the major turning points of Sara Sidle's life: her father's murder, going to Harvard, moving back to California for her masters from Berkeley, dropping out of the PhD program to take her first job in San Francisco, and the seminar where she'd met Gil Grissom. At some point during his lecture, Grissom's salt-and-pepper curls, bright blue eyes, unapologetic intelligence and total geekiness had cast a spell on her that she'd despaired of ever breaking.
Part of the problem, she'd figured out a few years ago, was that Grissom, deep down, didn't want to break the spell. He loved her; he just didn't love her more than he was afraid of her. Sara's brain had catalogued a thousand small moments of intimacy with Grissom around which she had built her dreams for the man, and each and every one of them came at the price of her happiness and peace of mind.
If Grissom had been a bolt from the blue, Nick had snuck up on her like a change of seasons. He was just always there, funny and flirtatious, always lightening the mood, always friendly without being a doormat, and she'd written him off at first. Too handsome, too suave, too Southern-sweet, too obviously a ladies' man, not smart enough – not as smart as Grissom. Compared to Grissom, no one ever measured up.
Except Nick was smart, she'd realized after a while. His intelligence was different than Grissom's – and hers, for that matter – but it was real. Once she got to know him a little better, what struck her most about Nick was his innocence. An odd quality in a grown man, but true nonetheless. Sara's mother, who had regained her footing in the world post-incarceration as a flaky, overgrown hippie, would probably call him a young soul.
The more she'd worked with Nick, the more she'd talked to him – listened to him – the more she'd liked him. And things might have gone on that way indefinitely, had it not been for what Sara thought of as the newest addition to her list of important moments: Nick in the box.
That first view of Nick, buried alive, screaming and thrashing in total panic, had been a body blow. The team had stood around the monitor for a long time, transfixed and horrified as the situation became clear. Sara had been the first to break away; she had sprinted on unsteady legs for the ladies' room and vomited until her stomach was cramping and empty. As she'd leaned against the toilet seat catching her breath, one thought had calcified in her brain and she'd clung to it until she saw Nick's body, damaged but free, quivering on the dirt at the nursery: I must save him.
When they'd loaded him into the ambulance, Sara had been stunned at the need she'd felt to follow. Grissom had made his quiet demand to Ecklie, but other than that, no one had spoken until Greg had made a move to start collecting evidence. Grissom had grabbed his sleeve briefly, muttered, "Go home, Greg, none of us have slept in days," and turned toward his vehicle.
Sara and Greg followed him; all five of them had ridden to the nursery together in Grissom's SUV in mute solidarity – they were a team again, and they would find their Nicky together – and the three who remained climbed numbly back into the vehicle to leave. Grissom had made to return to the lab until Sara, seeing the turn-off to the hospital, had emitted an odd, choked noise that she couldn't have labeled. Grissom hadn't even glanced at her; he'd merely flipped on the blinker and made the turn. Greg, from the back seat, had whispered, "Thanks," but it had otherwise been an eerily silent ride.
Nick had been in the trauma bay when they'd arrived, and could not yet see visitors, so they'd looked for the waiting room. There they had found Warrick propped against a wall with his arms around Catherine and his chin on the crown of her head, their dusty faces streaked with exhausted tears. Neither had made any move to disentangle, but Warrick had nodded at Grissom when they'd entered the room. Greg had gone searching for coffee almost immediately, and Grissom had slumped into a chair like someone had cut his strings. Sara had paced. I must save him. I must see him. No one had commented when she'd left the room.
I must see him. She'd seen the Employees Only door to the back of the ER on her first lap around the hall, and she'd made her way toward it as nonchalantly as possible, straightening her clothes and arranging her clipped-on ID badge to look as official as possible, and the next time the door opened, she strode through it.
She was able to locate him easily by following the swarm of people to the trauma bay. There were two cops standing unofficial post outside the curtained area, but they recognized her and simply nodded as she slipped into the room as unobtrusively as possible to flatten herself against a wall and watch.
They'd cut his clothes off, and a nurse was shoving them into a plastic bag with gloved hands. Without thinking, Sara reached out for the bag. The nurse glanced at her quizzically and was about to open her mouth when Sara held up her badge. The unsealed bag was passed to her, and Sara found herself clutching it to her body as she continued to stand and watch. A minute later, the nurse who'd handed her the bag was standing in front of her again with something silver glinting on her palm. Nick's watch. Sara reached out a trembling hand and took it, closing it inside her fist.
Nick was shaking all over, and his breathing had become labored. Sara's hands twitched to touch him, but she restrained herself by hugging the bag tighter to her middle. Under the harsh fluorescent glare, the bites from the fire ants looked red and angry, and she was shocked at the sheer number of them. One of the doctors, standing by Nick's head, listened with a stethoscope for a minute and called out, "He's really stridorous. Let's start the rapid-sequence intubation now."
It was fast. One minute, Nick was moving, the next he was completely still as a white liquid flowed into the IV in his arm. At his head, the doctor who'd yelled for intubation had a metal tool holding Nick's mouth open and was passing a tube down his throat. "I'm in."
A man in tan scrubs passed the doctor a hose with a bag on the end, which was hooked to the tube and squeezed for a few minutes until someone else brought a machine into the room and swapped out the bag for a different hose that connected to the machine. The flurry of activity continued as different people pumped medicines and fluids into Nick's IV, and a young woman bared his hip and swabbed it with brown fluid before plunging a large needle into him. Sara jumped at the blood that gushed out of the needle, but the doctor didn't seem phased and simply kept working until another IV was running and the blood was swabbed up with paper towels. "Trauma line in, we've got the One-Line going for fluid resuscitation."
"Is CT ready for us?"
"Yes."
"Okay, get him on a portable monitor and let's go."
A few more minutes of activity and they were gone, wheeling Nick, covered now in a hospital gown and blankets someone had pulled out of a stainless steel cabinet in the far corner of the room. Sara stood unmoving for a moment, clutching the bag of his clothes. She was about to follow Nick down the hall when she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. "Sara? Honey?"
How Grissom had made it past security she didn't know, but there he was. His eyes were droopy with exhaustion and his hair was disheveled, but his hand on her arm was warm and steady. She stared at him. "Honey, how long have you been standing there?"
The tears she'd been fighting since she'd first seen the video fought their way to the surface. Grissom's eyes widened in dismay. Seeing his expression, Sara thrust the bag of clothes into his arms and bolted.
Brass was the one who found her, ten minutes later, crouched at the service entrance by a dumpster, sobbing into her folded arms with her hand still clenched around Nick's watch. Scrunching up his nose at her choice of refuge, Brass had lowered himself beside her with a grunt, and slung an arm around her, pulling her head onto his shoulder. "Aw, kid, don't cry. He's okay." He'd sat with her until she'd cried herself out, patting her back occasionally, then helped her to her feet and half-carried her first up to the ICU to see Nick sleeping peacefully with the tube still in his mouth, and then to a borrowed cruiser to drive her home.
After Brass had dropped her off, she'd slept like the dead for almost eighteen hours. It was while she was showering off the grime of their ordeal that she'd formed her resolve to watch over Nick while he recovered. No one would ever hurt him again, not on her watch.
Sara's musings had taken her through most of the car ride back to the lab. If Grissom had done anything but glare at the oncoming headlights, she hadn't noticed. She supposed she should force the issue and talk to him about what was happening, but she just couldn't summon the energy at the moment. Instead, she decided to sit back for a few minutes and enjoy the change of seasons.