PG, CSI, Warrick/Catherine, Spoilers: All For Our Country. This was originally supposed to be longer and head off in a whole different direction, but I was struggling with it too much, so it turned into this instead. There aren't really many spoilers in it but since it's set in AFOC, I thought I'd better mention it.
Warrick looked up when Catherine came into the locker room.
He watched as she crossed the room without meeting his eyes, pulling her locker open with more force than was strictly necessary. He wondered if her case had taken a downwards turn, but he'd talked to her an hour ago when she and Sara had just finished interviewing their suspect and, after they'd laid out all their evidence, he'd cracked and confessed to everything. His case hadn't drawn to as a good resolution but finding out that someone from inside the system had gone bad always left everyone involved in the investigation with a bad feeling. Everyone was tempted sometimes, he hadn't lied to Grissom, but there were lines you just didn't cross. And murder was one of them.
He was still dwelling on his last conversation with Grissom; if his mentor hadn't walked away, he wondered what his response would have been. He shook his head lightly as though he could shake his thoughts away and turned his attention to Catherine, not that it was ever far from her, turning to face her and shutting his locker door. When the metal clang had died out, he offered, "Hey Cat."
"Hey." She didn't turn to look at him but he'd known her long enough to be able to read the tension in her shoulders and the slightly choked quality in her voice which told him she was upset about something.
"Catherine?" He waited until she looked up before he added, "Everything okay?"
"Everything's fine," she shrugged slim shoulders. A minute passed. "I ran into Jen, from dispatch, before," she handed over a piece of paper and then turned back to her locker, fiddling with the contents absent-mindedly. "I thought you'd gone but she gave me a message anyway in case I ran into you."
"When did you see her?" he asked as he read the words Jen had scribbled in her note. Two time/date suggestions and her phone number, apparently just in case he didn't have it. He hadn't lost her number since the first time she'd given it to him, when they were still back at dispatch, even though the idea had crossed his mind more than once. He'd only conceded to drinks with Jen to hurry the evidence process along, he'd escaped without setting a definite date and already he was feeling on the run.
He didn't want to go out with Jen. It wouldn't be fair to her anyway, not while his head and his heart were full of Catherine. He hoped she had already left CSI so her could avoid the issue for another day or two.
"Only a few minutes ago. You could probably still catch her." He winced as Catherine slammed her locker closed, the metallic sound grating harshly on his ears after the quiet of the room. Yep, he thought dryly to himself, definitely upset about something. He looked down at the piece of paper he held between his fingers, then balled it up and tossed it into the waste paper basket in the corner, thinking it was strange that Catherine wouldn't have seen his car in the CSI parking lot - they usually parked right next to each other in the spaces reserved for the night-shift.
"She cornered me when I was trying to get the tape of Fromansky," he explained to her, sitting down on the bench in the center of the room. Catherine had turned round to face him when he threw the paper into the bin and now she leant back against her locker, facing him. Her arms were crossed defensively but he suspected she was paying more attention than she appeared to be. With Catherine, sometimes, it was all about the little signs. "I escaped without making a definite date, I wanted the damn tape! I was kind of hoping she'd forget."
He sighed, it wasn't looking likely, and shrugged. "That's all there is to it."
"Hey ... it's not like you owe me an explanation."
Catherine shrugged to accompany her words, even as Warrick noticed that her body posture was less hostile and her eyes had changed, grown warmer. He thought about that for a long moment; thought about how he felt about her and about how he sometimes could swear she felt about him, thought about how it felt almost like he was cheating on Catherine to even make a date with Jen and, finally, he thought about the fact that he didn't want to date anyone other than the woman standing right in front of him.
They'd established all these boundaries when they first became friends and gradually as they grew closer and worked together longer, the boundaries had shifted and the walls had been broken down, brick by brick. Sometimes he'd pushed for a change, sometimes she had, sometimes things had just changed without them realising it.
Either way, he felt it was time to push the boundaries again.
"Don't I?"
Her eyes shot to his and her body tensed. He put her on the spot with his words and he knew it. He hoped she wasn't going to run from him. For, what in reality was only a moment, what felt like eternity, he waited for her to react one way or the other. Finally, she sighed and came to sit opposite him on the end of the other bench, staring at her hands.
"I don't like Jen," she admitted finally, twisting her fingers together. "I don't like the idea of you on a date with Jen." He caught her hands and she linked her fingers through his without thinking.
"Just Jen?" he queried in a voice barely above a whisper, squeezing her hands gently, remembering how cold Catherine had been to his last girlfriend.
Her fingers gripped his tighter. She looked at him, searching in his eyes for something to believe in. She was risking so much to tell him the truth; they talked about a thousand things, but how they really felt about each other had never been one of those things and she was scared. Warrick was one of the most important people in her life and she didn't want to risk destroying the friendship they already shared even if it was for the relationship that she craved.
One thing she did believe was that she could trust him. Her skin tingled wherever he touched her and his hands linked in hers were her anchor in this moment.
"Anyone," she said so softly he nearly missed it. "Anyone, but me."
He pulled gently on her hands and she moved willingly closer. She'd pictured their first kiss in a multitude of scenarios but nothing she dreamt up compared to the softness of his lips against hers, or the gentle strength of his arms around her Ð holding her close and keeping her safe. She lost herself in his arms and in his kiss, wanting to stay in this moment forever.
When they reluctantly broke apart, she rested her head against his shoulder, her whole body tingling. She was sure about how she felt about Warrick and she was fairly sure she knew how he felt about her ... but she still didn't know what this meant for the two of them.
"Cat," he whispered, his warm breath tickling her ear.
"What?" she whispered back, not wanting to move, not wanting to do anything that might bring this moment to an end. He brushed a loose strand of hair away from her eyes and the softest of kisses across her lips.
"I don't want to date anyone but you."
/finis.