Disclaimer: Owning...not so much.
This week I was struck by an inspiration: Weddings. Weddings on the show. I went to a wedding this weekend. It was just a huge theme I noticed, and I thought I would write about it!
Read and enjoy, I know I liked writing it!
The Marriage of Two Minds
Alone in the break room, Nick and Sara sat across from each other immersed in their own thoughts. All the other CSIs had picked up their own hot cases, leaving the pair to their own devices. Nick had a practically open-and-shut B & E, but backup from higher priority cases meant that he had to wait an ungodly amount of time to fill out any paperwork or arrest the prime suspect. His brunette coworker had maxed out on overtime the previous night, and was deserted in the no-man's land of the lab to help Nick should he need assistance. They'd both exhausted and bored themselves to death, resorting to the break room to idly wait for Hodges's trace analysis of the living room carpet.
Sara had picked up one of the few forsaken crosswords Grissom hadn't gotten to, and whittled away at the blank gray squares before her. Nick sat dead across from her, absorbed in a worn-out book of Shakespearean sonnets he had found in the sparse bookshelf in their only resting-place. With Sara's tongue peeking out when she was most concentrated and grunts of frustration or satisfaction upon clue completion, he couldn't help but look up and stare at her from his reading. He would gaze for a minute into her focused expression and smile before returning to the Elizabethan poetry he'd become fascinated with.
Finally, out of the silence of the situation, Sara ran a hand through her hair and let out an exasperated sigh. Three-quarters through her crossword, her eyes had become blurry and she was having trouble paying attention, something she normally excelled at. She looked over at the Texan, noticing his furrowed brow and contemplative eyes, and decided to say something.
"Nick?" She softly asked, as if they were in a library.
Nick looked up from his book and smiled. "Yes Sara?"
"I need help," Sara confessed.
"What? Are you actually admitting to needing help with something scholastic? Wow, Armageddon approacheth." Nick cracked, putting both of his elbows on their shared table and quietly laughing in his gruff, syrupy voice.
"Yes, I admit it," Sara conceded, "And, might I add, 'approacheth'? I don't know about this whole Old English thing, it doesn't suit you."
"Okay darlin'," Nick drawled out in his thick Southwestern accent, showing her that he favored cowboy roughness to English finery, "I'll be a Southern gentleman instead of an English one from now on, promise." He laughed again and, noticing Sara's apparent impatience, calmed down to listen to her.
"Now…as for my question…" Sara continued as she tapped her ball-point pen on the newspaper in a staccato rhythm, "The clue is: of two minds. It's eight letters, and I'm somehow drawing a blank." She slumped down into her chair, rubbing her hands on her face in an attempt to awaken herself from the stupor the crossword had placed upon her.
Nick smiled for a second, having read it a page before. "It's marriage. A marriage of two minds…it's the first line from Shakespeare's sonnet 116." Nick flipped to the poem he'd previously read and proceeded to rhapsodize it aloud: "Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments, Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds or bends—"
"I get it!" Sara interrupted lightly. Nick smiled and flipped back to the sonnet he was viewing before his little literature lesson. She smiled back and bit her lip, turning her focus back to the set of blank squares before her. In her sloppy scrawl, she wrote the word marriage into the little uniform slots. Yet, instead of continuing on to the next question, she began to stare at the word.
Marriage stared back at her.
She shook her head, and then looked at Nick. She looked back down at the crossword; the word marriage hadn't left. Her countenance twisted into one of bemusement, continuing her stare-down with the scrawled pattern of English letters. She began to fidget, rustling in her chair amid the stark stillness of their situation. Her eyes shifted to various places around the room, and she began to dive into deep thought. Intrigued, Nick looked up from his book to humor her.
"What's up, Sar?" Nick inquired. She looked at him, squinting her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and then shook her head before beginning again.
"What is it with us and weddings?"
"Excuse me?" Nick replied, obviously confused. Sara snapped out of her flustered stage to lean back into her chair for a second time, releasing a large breath before analyzing the massive and probative question she instigated.
"I'm just saying, it seems that whenever we have a case about marriage or a wedding taking place, it's always you and I who are called to the scene." Sara bit her lip and looked deep into the brown eyes of her fellow CSI. "It's just an observation…." She continued in a futile attempt to explain herself.
Nick chuckled and shifted his weight towards the table and closer to Sara as if the simple observation was an intimate conversation. "I can see the coincidence," he agreed, "But what does it have to do with anything?"
"Well," Sara clarified; "It also seems that whenever we work a wedding case, marriage gets brought up by one person or another." she leaned into him to match his body language, her objective CSI brain taking over the situation.
"Oh," Nick realized, "You mean that time when that crazy alien pastor brought up you and I getting married?"
She leaned back from the table and began tapping her toe, recalling the situation that had happened years before. "Man, wasn't that embarrassing?" She asked.
"Completely." Nick stated as he remembered his own version of the same situation. "But," he said with a puzzled look, "We have never talked about it before, so why bring it up now?"
"Uh…" Sara responded, "I'm bored, and tired, and this word is just looming on my page. Marriage. It's throwing me through a loop today. Maybe I need a nap…." Sara ranted as she began a second round of nervous fidgeting. She was at the end of her rope, and she desperately looked for something to do—anything that she could accomplish that was not the crossword with that word on it.
"Sidle, I still cannot believe you dislike marriage so much." Nick said earnestly.
"I've told you already. It's not that I don't like marriage; I just don't like people who do it when they have no clue as to why. Marriage can be fodder for completely false grounds of thinking you love someone. People can be stupid about it. That's what I don't like about it."
As Sara's oral dissertation came to an end, she let out a large breath and stood up to get water. Nick's eyes followed her movements as she reached the communal refrigerator to pull out one of her stockpiled water bottles. She took a swig the cool refreshment before sitting back down in her chair across from Nick, who'd been thinking of a proper response to her clear explanation of her stance on the situation. Yet, all he could think of was the pastor of that little chapel, and his sprightly tone as he told Nick that Sara was his ideal.
"She's gonna 'getcha." He said under his breath before looking at Sara.
"What?" Sara inquired, quirking her eyebrow in confusion.
"I said 'She's gonna 'getcha." Nick replied as he sheepishly smiled in Sara's direction.
"Ah…" Sara said in mock-revelation. He waggled his eyebrows at her, evoking an eruption of giggles from the tall brunette woman. "That guy was completely crazy. Out of all the things that I've overheard about myself on the job, that one is by far the craziest. I mean, who says that?"
"She's gonna 'getcha?" Nick questioned as she looked at him with her Good-Work-Captain-Obvious face. Nick also knew exactly what she'd said, but he felt like playing games with her. Time flies when you're having fun.
"Yes! I mean, honestly, where did he get that whole thing from?" Sara implored as she took another swig of her water bottle.
"Well…" Nick searched for a meaningful answer, flipping through the pages of the decrepit book that he'd been indulging in. "Maybe it's like what William Shakespeare said, you know, a marriage of two minds? Crazy Alien Pastor might've thought that you and I were ethereal, spiritual partners or something."
Sara tried with all her might to keep herself from snorting and blowing water out of her nose. "I'm just thinking that Crazy Alien Pastor was crazy, simple as that. He probably just thought that because we were sitting less than a foot away from each other that we were close. Crazy alien pastors…do that." Sara began to babble as she lost her train of thought. She looked back on where their conversation had taken them, and shook her head. Her brain hurt, and their discussion wasn't helping.
She turned to Nick with a half-smile and he returned the look, grabbing her hand on the table.
"You know, for someone who hates marriages and rebukes the insightful statement of a simply quirky bystander, I'm still surprised at you," Nick started "I think you're just scared to admit that marriage means that you have to give all of yourself, and I understand that. It's frightening, and I feel for you."
"Oh Nick," Sara replied in a willowy and honeyed voice, "Did Bill Shakespeare make you soft?"
Nick shook his head and chuckled, showing his laugh lines. He let go of Sara's hand and pushed himself out of the chair. Smoothly, he walked around the long, square break-room table to steal the chair right next to Sara. She shot him a soft smile as he leaned in to whisper in her ear.
"And, Miss Sidle, for someone who hates getting married, might I remind you that you did say yes?"
Nick picked up Sara's left hand and eyed the sapphire encased in a gold band. "And might I say," He continued, "It is one nice ring."
Sara beamed at him, and lost herself in his dark brown eyes. Slowly, their lips closed the distance between them and they met in a tantalizing, leisurely kiss. They pulled away from each other, and Nick touched his forehead to Sara's.
"Oh geez," Hodges said in an exasperated tone as he walked into the room from the lab, breaking the two CSIs apart, "Stokes, Stokes's fiancee, can you guys please get a room?"
"We did." Nick replied with a hint of dry sarcasm.
"Still," Hodges whined, "That lovey-dovey crud doesn't work here in the lab. Keep it business, for the love of Christ."
"Fine." Sara snapped, looking at Nick with a huge grin on her face. She wrinkled her nose, and winked at him before turning to Hodges with a stone-faced expression.
"Now," Hodges broke in with a hint of arrogant stability, "I would like to get my Lean Cuisine and eat it in peace. Nick, your trace-analysis is printing."
"Okay…" Nick sighed, "I'll go wait for it."
"And I'll go with you," Sara said, raising her eyebrows secretly in a suggestive manner to her fiancée.
They both quickly left their chairs and rushed out to wait for the trace analysis together. They held each other's hands as they walked down the hallways of the lab, Sara's engagement ring shining under the ultraviolet lights of the building. Nick opened the door to the trace room, whispering something to Sara as she walked passed him. Laughter could be heard all through the noiseless lab, a sure sign of bliss.
Yes, it truly was a marriage of two minds.
Hehehe...didn't see that one coming, did you? I love me some fluff once in a while!
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