Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Thank you for the kind reviews for Familiar!
Pairing: N/S (did you expect anything else?)
Sara had been wrecking her brain what to give Nick for his birthday. She wanted it to be something special and she wouldn't mind it to be something else than taking him to dinner to his favorite restaurant, The Steak House, which happened to be her least favorite restaurant.
She was driving home after an exhausting double shift when she heard the presenter of the LasVegasTonight radio show announce a competition.
"Get pen and paper ready people, because it will be worth it. Tonight you can win yourself two tickets to the premier of "Evel Knievel" at the Las Vegas City Theatre and most of the cast will be there as well, including too cute to be true George Eads. E-mail your answer on the following question to LVTonight at LasVegas.radio The question is: " What is the first sentence George Eads says in this movie?"
Sara knew the answer to this question, because Nick had used it a lot these past weeks. Nick had told her it was impossible to get tickets to the opening night of "Evel Knievel" and he would have loved to go and see it. She wouldn't mind to see George Eads up close and personal as well, although it probably was his resemblance to Nick that made him so attractive to her.
"So people call in tonight and get your personal password and e-mail this password together with the answer, your name and telephone number to LVTonight at LasVegas.radio before 5 pm tomorrow," she heard the presenter say. Sara knew what the number was of the radio station, because they repeated it so many times during their broadcasts, it had stored itself in her long term memory.
As soon as she entered her apartment she called the radio station. She got a recorded message which said her password was "Your own Las Vegas Hottie". The password made her laugh out loud, because she was no where near being a Las Vegas hottie, she was more like a Las Vegas science nerd. She remembered so well when Nick told her she had changed. It still made her blush.
She tried to log on to her PC, but she got a message that the connection was broken off, because something was wrong with her server. Not again! This always happened when she really needed to do something important on the Internet. She decided to try again before she left for work later that evening. She was exhausted and desperately needed some sleep.
She heard something far away, but her mind didn't register what it was. Slowly she opened one eye to see it was 4 pm. Oh my God she thought, shift started 30 minutes ago. She jumped out of bed, ran to the shower and got herself ready in a record time of 5 minutes. She looked like she got ready in 5 minutes, but she didn't care. She ran out the front door, but while she was locking it, she remembered the radio competition. She opened the door again and grabbed the piece of paper on which she had written down the password and the e-mail address. She just had to send in her answer from the lab.
"Glad you could make it", Nick called out to her while she was running towards the entry of the LVPD lab. He, Warrick and Catherine probably got assigned to the same case, which meant she would be working with Grissom and he wouldn't happy with her being late. She entered Grissom's office. He wasn't there, but he had left her a note.
Sara, please do some background checking on the following persons. E-mail the results to me ASAP. Grissom
Good, this also gave her some time to e-mail the answer to the question of the radio competition. She got herself a cup of coffee and headed to her small but comfortable office. It was 4.45 pm already and she only had 15 minutes to send in her answer. There was no space on her desk to put her cup of coffee down, so she balanced it between her legs on her chair and started writing the e-mail.
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To:
From: SaraSidle
Hey sexy! Do you wanna go on a hot date with me?!
Sara Sidle
Your own Las Vegas Hottie
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She reached for the piece of paper to check the e-mail address when she spilled the hot coffee all over her pants. She got up to grab some paper towels bumping into the computer. She then heard "Message Sent" she looked up to see that the message had been sent to LVCSI nightshift group she had created in order to send e-mails to everyone of the nightshift team quickly. This meant the e-mail had been sent to everyone of the nightshift team, including Grissom. "Oh my God!" she thought
The one person who could help her out was Archie. There was no time to waste, but she also needed to resend her answer to the radio station and she needed to do it now, because it was 4.55 pm already. She retyped the e-mail and made sure she typed in the correct address and pushed the "send and receive" button. Then she hurried off to find Archie.
"Archie, I need your help. Now!" She practically screamed out to him while entering his office.
"Hey Sar, calm down, take breath and tell me what I can do for you," he said without lifting his eyes off his computer screen.
"I've just sent a message which can be misunderstood very easily to everyone of the nightshift. I need to get it back, please tell me you can get it back."
At that moment she heard Archie's computer say "You've got mail". Her e-mail popped up on his screen and she saw his eyes get large.
"Uhm, Sara, you could just have asked me in person if you wanted to go out with me."
"Not funny!"
She started to explain about the radio competition and how she had accidentally sent it to everyone on the nightshift.
"So can you get it back for me?"
"Well, I can get it back from the people who are not logged on to the network at this moment, which are Nick, Warrick and Catherine. Which leaves Greg, Doc Robbins and...."
"Grissom" she finished his sentence. She dropped her head and put her hands in front of her face.
"I'm sorry Sar. At least your surprise for Nick won't be ruined."
"Gosh that makes me feel so much better. Thanks anyway Archie. I have to get back."
She sat down behind her computer once again and started to work on the assignment Grissom gave her when she heard "You've got mail". The message popped up on her screen:
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To: SaraSidle
From: GregTheMan
Sara, my sweet or better my own Las Vegas hottie,
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I want to go on a hot date with you!!!!!!!!! I knew this day would come eventually, but I didn't know God would answer my prayers so soon.
Your sexy man Greg
PS I'm writing you this e-mail in case you are out working in the field, but I'm heading to your office right now to check if you are there so we can discuss when and where this hot date will take place.
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Sara heard someone running down the hallway. She was sure it was Greg. She wanted to go and hide somewhere, but she knew she had to face him eventually. She just needed to let him down nicely.
Greg practically stumbled into her office, trying to catch his breath, all he could say was: "Yes, yes, yes!"
"Uhm Greg, I don't know how to tell you but that e-mail was not supposed to be sent to you," she said in one breath.
The look in his eyes made her feel so sorry, but she knew it wouldn't be fair to either one of them if she would go out with him out of pity. She liked Greg a lot. He was a great friend, but that was all he was to her. She continued explaining about the radio competition and the birthday present for Nick.
"Oh," was all Greg managed to say. "You know I already thought it would be too soon for God to answer my prayers. I only added "going out on a date with Sara" to my prayers just recently. But you have to know that God does answer all my prayers, the last time I asked Him for something, you came to work here." He turned around and headed back to the DNA lab.
"One down, one to go," Sara thought. She knew Doc Robbins rarely read his e-mails, so by the time he would read her e-mail the story about the competition would have circulated around the lab.
Sara finished her work and walked to the break room. She was reading through the case file they were working on when Grissom entered the room.
"Sara, I think we should talk."
"Grissom......"
"I actually don't know what to do about this, but it seems like you do."
"Grissom, I think I should...."
"You have been so determined to change my mind, so I have decided to give us a chance, let's see what happens."
Sara was shocked. She hadn't expected this. Before she could answer him, Archie came running into the break room.
"Sara, you've won! You have actually won. They were saying that your e-mail actually came in at 5 pm exactly and they were debating whether they could still add you to the list of competitors, but they figured that someone who could send her e-mail exactly at 5 pm deserved to be the winner. So now you can have your birthday date with Nicky. See everything turned out okay! Greg already told me you explained to him what happened, did you get the chance to explain to Grissom....."
This was when Archie noticed Grissom in the break room. Sensing the tension he slowly started to back out of the break room, mouthing "congrats" to Sara.
"Grissom, I tried to explain it you. I'm so very sorry I have put you in this situation."
"Sara, let's forget about it, okay?!"
Having said that Grissom left the break room. He didn't understand. When did this happen? When did Nick and Sara happen? He had been jealous of the easy way those two had been interacting, but he hadn't noticed she actually moved on. She had been right when she said that when he would figured out what "This was" it would be too late.
It had been a long night and even though Sara was very happy she had won the competition (the radio station had sent the tickets to the premier over immediately), she was a bit upset about the Grissom situation. No matter how many times she wished he would know how it felt like to be treated the way he had been treating her, it wasn't her intention to hurt him. He had been hurt alright. She saw it on his face. She was sitting in the locker room contemplating whether she should go to Grissom and talk about it, when she heard someone coming in. She turned around to face whomever it was. It was Nick. Seeing his face could always make her smile.
"Hey, I've heard you've had quite a day," he said. "I didn't understand it entirely, but it involved a date and an e-mail to Greg and Grissom. So who did you ask out on a date?"
"You. Happy Birthday Nicky." She got up and hugged him. She explained the whole messy situation to him, which was quite amusing to him. She got the tickets to the premier out of her locker and gave them to him.
"So, if I understand it correctly, you actually weren't asking anyone out on a date?" he said trying to hold her gaze.
"It can be a date, if you want it to be," she said shyly.
"Then a date it is!" Nick replied grinning widely.
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The next day when Sara logged on at work a message popped up on her screen:
To: SaraSidle
From: DocRobbins
Dear Sara,
Needless to say I am very flattered and if I was 20 years younger and not married, I wouldn't have thought about it and taken you up on your offer. It doesn't mean that we can't be friends however and I would love to get to know you better. Maybe you can come over and have dinner with my wife and me sometime. You can bring along a friend if you like.
Your friend always,
Doc Robbins
PS David was standing next to me when your message popped up on my screen. He is now sulking in a corner, maybe you can ask him out on a hot date. He is more your age and I'm sure he is willing to go with you:-)
A/N I have no idea what the movie "Evel Knievel" is about and the first sentence by George Eads is not "Hey sexy! Do you wanna go on a hot date with me?!" I made that up as well for the storyline. I wanted to make Sara 3,5 hours too late for shift, but that would be way out of character, so I didn't do that. Any comments, are very welcome:-)
When I uploaded the story the e-mail addresses didn't come out okay, so I changed the addresses.
