She supposed that this was what flying felt like. Not like in a plane or hang glider or something of the like, but lifting off into the air and soaring above the clouds with her arms reaching out in front of her. Being with Nick was like standing up too fast, feeling light headed and dizzy, a shortness of breath and slightly blurry vision. She couldn't put one particular analogy with the feeling Nick gave her, so she decided to stop trying and just let it be what it was.
It was annoyingly bright outside, after spending hours in a dimly lit bedroom the light offended her. She held her hand up over her eyes and squinted, the fresh air was short lived and she retreated back into her house and swiftly drew the curtain over her sliding glass back door.
Goosebumps rose on her bare arms and legs as the cold air inside the house slid over her sun-warmed skin. She shivered and decided it was time to put some sort of clothing on other than a tank top and her underwear. She turned to walk back to her room when her eyes halted on a most beautiful site. Nick was standing, completely naked, in her kitchen making something to eat. She didn't care what because whatever it was couldn't be more delicious than he was.
His back was to her, and at that moment a tiny memory of watching him shirtless in the locker room floated across her mind. The muscles in his back were flexing and moving with every motion, down and down, but instead of disappearing into a pair of tight jeans, they turned gently into his smooth taught behind where her eyes shamefully lingered a moment longer, then into the strong, lean muscles of his powerful legs dusted with dark hair. She shook her head thinking he should have been a model and then thanking God he wasn't.
He felt her watching him and turned his head to look over his shoulder at her.
"Take your clothes off then come over here and finish this so I can stand there staring at you and not help." He turned back around and even though she couldn't see his face she knew he was smiling.
She walked over to the counter and took her place beside him. He was dicing green bell peppers. The cutting board already contained finely chopped onions and tomatoes; there beside him was a bowl full of beaten eggs. He was making omelets. He was smart, funny, drop dead handsome, and to top it off, he made breakfast in the nude, Mandy felt it was the first time she had hit the jackpot since coming to Vegas.
He stopped the chopping and captured her mouth in his. It never seemed to fail, every time he kissed her, here senses were like a compass in a magnet field, he sent her spinning.
After their long and luxurious good morning kiss, she pulled out a generous sized pan and set it on the stove. The entire omelet making process turned into an ordeal consisting of tickling and a mini food fight, but after it was all said and done, they were both stuffed and retreated back to Mandy Webster's bedroom to fall into a food coma.
This truly is bliss; Mandy thought to herself as she slipped back to sleep in the crook of Nick Stokes' arm listening to his gentle breathing and the rhythmic beat of his heart.
--
Nick stared at the ceiling of Mandy's bedroom. Only small beams of light filtered through her dark burgundy curtains as he twirled a tendril of her dark brown hair around a long finger. So much had happened, so much in such a small amount of time. A few times he felt panic, not knowing what to make of the flood of emotion that seemed to wash over him every time he saw her, or God forbid someone mentioned her name. It scared him, excited him, it did things to him that for a long time he wasn't sure he liked.
He found that he certainly liked it all now.
He smiled to himself; Mandy was already fast asleep snuggled up to him in the warmth of her bed. He'd cooked breakfast before for some of the women he had been with, some of them liked it, most of them were offended that even after he had done intimate things to them, that he would have the "audacity" to go through their kitchens, and the others were just truly ungrateful. But Mandy, she was different as usual, he would dare to guess that no one save for her mother had ever attempted to cook for her, he was confident that any gesture he made no matter how small would never be lost on her.
This was what it was supposed to feel like, relaxed and comfortable, no awkward pauses and glances in the morning, no need to explain anything, no sudden realization that he didn't really know the person he had spent the night with. He knew her, and he had done his best to make sure that she knew him. But while it was all good and well that they knew one another, he still had a shadowy area of doubt, doubt about everyone else knowing them. What would people say? What would people do? Would there be anything for anyone to say or do anyway? What business was it of theirs anyway?
As much as he wanted to say who cares and shrug it off, it nagged at him on the inside. Things were great now, but what if by some unfortunate and unforeseen chance something happened between them, CSI was his life, and he was sure that it was hers too. Everyone would blame him for anything that may or may not happen, people would hate him, if they didn't already for preconceived notions that he was going hurt her regardless because of a reputation that he really hadn't known preceded him. Hodges popped into his head at that thought. He really hated that conniving bastard.
But what if everyone felt that way about him, and he was just the only one who had the balls to say it to his face? He hated caring so much about what people thought. He was desperately trying not to doom their relationship before it even made it out of the gate. But would other people do it for him? Would Hodges? What if he got to Mandy, what if his venom like words got to her and she thought of him as a two bit player? The thought was killing him. Before he could finish that thought Mandy sat up and looked at him with concern.
"You're grinding your teeth," she said softly. He hadn't noticed that in his dwelling he was indeed grinding his teeth, and loudly. His jaw flexed.
"I'm sorry I didn't mean to wake you up," he said staring down into her brown eyes. Her hair was a tangled mess around her soft face. He couldn't help but smile.
"I know what you're thinking about," she said and he furrowed his brow, "you're thinking "what about work", believe me; the thought has crossed my mind too." His gaze urged her to continue.
"I've been worried that some of the other techs like Wendy will think I'm sleeping with you to get ahead, maybe to try and jump the gap Greg had to traverse to be a field CSI or something even thought I'd never want to do field work no offense," she smiled.
"None taken." He returned the expression.
"Or maybe that I'm "that girl", ya know, the one who sleeps with every guy at work or something, or that I feel like I should be treated different because I'm with you."
He almost felt like his worries were nothing compared to hers.
"Not to mention how jealous some of the others may be, I mean, not that you are all they think about or something, I mean, not that your aren't desirable because you know I think you are, but, you know what I mean." They smiled again.
"I see what you're saying, and honestly I didn't really think about it like." He truthfully hadn't.
That was just one more thing on the list of things he was learning lately, trying to think of someone else other than himself. He wasn't selfish by any means, but he was so use to being alone and holding out little to no hope of something solid forming from his sporadic trysts, that he had almost forgotten what it was like to put himself in the shoes of someone he cared about.
"How's about we just keep us a secret for now," she said, "just us, something that's ours and no one else's." She grinned, all the while tracing lines across his chest.
"I like that," he said as he rolled toward her and covered her mouth with his beginning the previous night's activities all over again.
He didn't have the heart to tell her that someone already knew, someone who already seemed to have some sort of window into her life. He tried his best to push the thought that right now that someone may be telling Grissom and God knew who else about what he saw far into the back of his mind. He tried hard to focus on how good Mandy felt underneath him. He wouldn't tell her, he would keep it to himself and deal with it later he figured, all the while not knowing that Mandy knew full well about Hodges. She too was pushing similar thoughts out of her head.