DISCLAIMER: Yeah. The usual. They're not mine and I'm not making any money from them.
It's been a long night and they're as tired as hell, but really, what's different about that? Nick knows half the reason he hasn't made their relationship public is because he doesn't want to deal with all the silly questions, because he doesn't want the sly office gossip about what they could possibly see in each other, because he doesn't want sideways glances and whispered comments about Sara's "thing" for Grissom. He knows what everyone at work thinks about Sara, and he knows what he thinks about Sara, and he knows he loves her when she's tired like this.
She's lying on her stomach on their bed at the moment. The bed's in the living room because they've decided to repaint their bedroom and there's no room anywhere else in the house for their bed and they can't sleep with the smell of paint. So Sara's lying on the bed and she's playing video games, blowing enemy spaceships into smithereens. He likes watching her play, likes the intense look of concentration on her face and the look of satisfaction she gets every time she makes a hit. And it would be lying to say he doesn't love the fact that she's working off some of her tension on something that doesn't break.
Nick's only just come home from work and he's standing in the doorway, just watching, remembering all the times she's refused to play his video games and all the times he's caught her at it. He shuts the door behind him and dumps his coat and kicks off his shoes and just leaves them, and climbs onto the bed beside Sara just as she blows up the largest and biggest of the space craft. Nick is slightly amused, and a lot more disappointed, to discover she's beaten his high score. Sara drops the controller onto the bed and rolls over onto her side. "Hey," says Nick, brushing back her hair with one hand because he's not very good at keeping his hands off her.
"Hi," she says, giving him a quick kiss, her lips lingering on his for just a few seconds, but Nick can really taste her anyway. He runs his hand down her head and down over her body to her hip, and then because he can't quite resist he ducks his fingers under her shirt and tickles her waist. She takes a deep breath and shrieks like a child, "Don't! Nick!" He pushes her onto her back and pins her to the bed with one arm and keeps tickling her while she writhes and tries not to giggle. He knows he's much stronger than her and he takes advantage of that, rearranging them so her arms are pinned to the pillows above her head, one of his hands holding them securely at the wrists while Nick, his body half on top of hers to hold her down, keeps tickling, and their legs hang off the end of the bed and if one of them makes a sudden leg movement - and it's probably going to be Sara - the TV is going to get kicked. Sara is laughing now, laughing so hard that tears are coming to her eyes, because Nick knows from long experience where she's most ticklish.
Sara cries for mercy and Nick stops, half reluctantly, looking at the laughter in her eyes, and, yes, loving the fact that they're having a one sided tickle war on the bed in the living room. He shifts his body weight completely on top of her and takes one of her wrists in each of his hands and keeps them pinned to the bed. Ducking his head, pleased with himself, he says, "Got ya," and goes in for a kiss, but then he recognises that there's a sudden look of fear in her eyes and he could kick himself, because he knows she feels at her most vulnerable like this. He has total physical control over her now and she hates that, even when it's him.
He runs his hands down her arms and rests on his elbows and says, "Sara, trust me." She looks up at him, those big dark eyes which have the power to turn him into goo still filled with her nameless fears. She wraps her arms around his neck, but he can feel the hesitancy in her. "Sara, trust me," he says again, and he is totally solemn and totally serious now, because this isn't a tickle war. "I'd never hurt you. Never."
Her eyes duck away from his for a few seconds and then she looks back. "I know," she whispers, and there's something in her voice that tells him she isn't quite sure. Nick wants to damn her ex-boyfriends for all eternity and to curse each and every man that taught her than men couldn't be trusted, that she wasn't worth someone who cared about her, that she was vulnerable. "I love you," Nick says, and he does, so much it hurts and he's never felt like this before.
"I know," she says again.
"You can trust me," he whispers, desperately searching for reassurance in her eyes. His reassurance, hers, he doesn't know, but they both need it in this relationship, every day.
"I'm trying," she whispers back, and her voice is honest and so are her eyes.
"Okay," he murmurs. "That's all I need." Maybe that's a tiny little white lie - he needs her trust more than he needs her to be trying to trust him - but if that's what he's going to get he's going to cling to that. And anyway, she is trying, and he knows it, and he knows better than most how it is to move on when someone's torn up your trust. He cups her cheeks in his hands and as she closes her eyes he moves down and kisses her, slowly, gently, tasting her lips and her tongue, feeling her kissing back with the same gentle movements. And yeah, Nick would take this - Sara and video games and tickle wars and a bed in the living room and slow tender kisses - because really it's everything and actually it's more than everything.
And that pile of goo thing? Oh yeah. Definitely happening.
THE END