Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing.
Author's Note: A fluffy ficlet in response to a challenge. Yeah, I know Labor Day was a long time ago. And Julie, since I'm too lazy to think up things on my own, please thank your neighbors for me.
"You owe me a new pair of pants." Sara gave Nick one of her trademark icy glares as she stood in the kitchen with her arms crossed, not appreciating the newly created ventilation in the seat of the pajama pants she was wearing.
"Well they're my pants, so technically you owe me a new pair." Nick shot her a smug look.
"You're the one that ripped them," Sara was quick to point out.
"Well they wouldn't have ripped if you had just given them to me like I asked so I wouldn't have had to chase you around the house."
"Why did you even need them in the first place? You never wear them anymore." Her tone was snippy.
"Well how can I if you always are?" Nick crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow in challenge.
Sara could only glare at him, realizing he did have a point. She did always wear them; they were her favorite.
Nick sighed. "Fine. I'll make it up to you." He gave in, not feeling like arguing. He took a suggestive step toward her.
"I need to shower. We're going to be late," she weakly protested, trying her best to stay upset with him. Catherine had invited the night shift to her house for a Labor Day barbeque, and they had promised to stop by for a little while before shift that night.
"I'm very good at multi-tasking," Nick grinned as he attempted to wrap his arms around her.
Sara rolled her eyes and avoided his grasp by turning to head for the bathroom. Nick immediately followed her, taking her lack of a response to mean she had no objections.
After their shower, the two headed for Catherine's house, letting themselves in through the side gate that led to the backyard.
"Sorry we're late," Nick apologized as he and Sara approached Catherine, who was sitting under the patio with her sister.
"Nick ripped my pants," Sara added in an apparent attempt at an explanation.
"Well they were actually my pants." Nick sounded a bit defensive.
"Right." Catherine gave her coworkers a bemused look before her gaze was diverted to a figure behind them that was approaching the patio.
"Well it's nice of you two to finally show up," Warrick quipped as he grabbed a diet chocolate cola from the cooler and sat down next to Catherine.
"Nick ripped Sara's pants. Or, uh, his pants." Catherine tried to explain the situation to Warrick without really understanding it herself.
Warrick held up his hands. "Hey, I don't need to hear about your bedroom sexcapades."
"Actually, we were in the kitchen," Nick replied with a straight face.
"Hey, what did I just say?" Warrick was clearly annoyed.
Nick smirked. "What happened to you?" He was the first to comment on the fact that Warrick wasn't wearing a shirt and his jeans looked soaked, like he'd fallen into a pool, a pool that Catherine didn't have.
"I lost a water gun fight to those munchkins out there," Warrick explained, gesturing to the four kids running around on the grass. "Well it started out water gun. It ended up water hose," he added, tossing his wet t-shirt at Nick.
"Can't you keep your shirt on when there are kids around?" Nick quipped.
"Don't listen to Nick," Catherine said to Warrick. "I'm sure nobody will mind. I know I don't." She flashed a smile at Warrick and then turned to the other two ladies present. "Am I right?"
"No complaints here," Sara said with a smile.
"Hey!" Nick protested as he turned to Sara.
"Jealousy isn't a very flattering quality," Warrick said to Nick.
"Why would I be jealous of you? Who's the one without a girlfriend here?" Nick was not hesitant to emphasize Warrick's lack of a love life.
"Arrogance isn't very flattering either," Sara said as she looked at Nick with an expression he took as somewhat of a warning.
Warrick shot a triumphant smirk in Nick's direction.
"What the hell is that? Humpty Dumpty?" Nick quipped as he pointed at a small tattoo on Warrick's chest, determined not to come out the loser in their conversation.
"It's a Weeble," Warrick replied in a curt tone.
Nick raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.
"They were my favorite toys when I was a little kid. My grams gave them to me," Warrick explained.
"Okay then." Nick said for lack of anything non-sarcastic to say.
Everyone turned their attention to the side gate when they heard it creak open.
"Look what the cat dragged in. Our favorite labrat," Nick said as Greg approached them.
"You look like a drowned labrat," Warrick quipped, taking in his somewhat disheveled appearance.
"Tired labrat," Greg corrected him, irritation evident in his voice. "My new neighbors were blasting Spanish rap music the entire morning. And singing along to it. Not very well either."
"I'd take Spanish rap over German opera any day. I was so happy to move out of that apartment," Sara recalled. "Although now I have to hear the shower rendition of 'Get Off My Cloud' everyday." She glanced at Nick.
"Hey, not everyday. I sing other stuff too," Nick replied in his defense.
"I wouldn't really call it singing." Sara smirked at him.
Nick opened his mouth to defend himself yet again, but was interrupted by what sounded like a small stampede.
"Hey mom, can we have the fortune cookie ice cream now, please?" Lindsey begged as she came running from the lawn with her cousins.
"I want the Oreo Fudge ice cream!" Lindsey's younger cousin Jeremy chimed in.
"Ice cream? Looks like we came just in time," Nick grinned.
"Alright, just a minute, children." Catherine placed an emphasis on the last word of her statement as she gave Nick a look.
"Thanks mom, you're the best!" Nick overenthusiastically replied.
Catherine disappeared into the house, and just a few short minutes after her return there were four kids and one CSI sitting at the table digging into their big bowls of ice cream.
"This is really good," Nick mumbled with his mouth full to Sara, who was sitting next to him sipping her iced tea. "Try some." He held up a spoonful of Oreo Fudge to her.
"I'm okay, thanks," she politely refused, her stomach telling her it would not take kindly to dairy products at the moment.
"Just try a little, it's good," Nick assured her.
"Later."
"Hey, and check out this spoon. It changes colors when it gets cold. It's like a Hypercolor spoon."
Sara was about to laugh at Nick's childish enthusiasm, but as he tilted the spoon to show her how it had changed colors, the big chunk of ice cream sitting in it fell out, slid down the front of her shirt, and landed in her lap. A wave of giggles erupted from the four kids across the table from them.
"Oops." Nick gave Sara a sheepish grin. He attempted to scoop up the ice cream from her lap with his spoon, but Sara grabbed his wrist to stop him, instead wiping it up with a napkin.
"Hey, that was still good!" Nick protested.
"I think you've had enough sugar for today. We don't want you all hyper for work tonight," she playfully admonished as she headed inside to clean herself up.
"You got scolded," Jeremy said as he giggled again.
"Just eat your ice cream, little man," Nick smirked as he got up to follow Sara inside the house. He went in and found her in the downstairs bathroom. "I'd have thought Catherine would have more taste than this," Nick commented as he walked in, gesturing toward the gaudily printed shower curtain, which consisted of bright yellow pineapples and wide-eyed frogs.
"It's not coming out," Sara said, frustration evident in her tone as she dabbed at the chocolate ice cream stain on her white shirt.
"It's not the end of the world. It's just a shirt." Nick tried to comfort her.
"It has sentimental value. This is the white shirt." She looked up at him through the mirror.
Nick eyed the shirt intently until he realized what Sara was talking about. "Oh, right." He stepped toward her and wrapped his arms around her waist as a mischievous smiled played at his lips. "Well, so what? You weren't technically wearing it at the time," he teased.
Sara smirked at him through the mirror before turning her attention back to the stain.
Nick reached for Sara's belt in an attempt to undo the buckle. "You know, the first time doesn't always have to be the most memorable," he teased suggestively.
"We're in Catherine's bathroom," Sara pointed out the obvious to emphasize how indiscreet and outlandish she thought Nick's idea was, though she made no attempt to stop his hands from undoing her belt.
"That's the point," Nick whispered into her ear as he finished with Sara's belt and moved to the button of her jeans.
Sara had never seen Nick this feisty, and she had no idea what had gotten into him, but as he unzipped her jeans, she realized that as much as she wanted to, there was no way they could go any further. "Nick, we can't." She tried to wriggle free from his grasp.
"Sure we can." He reached out to swing the bathroom door closed.
"Nick," Sara protested, more forcefully this time as she tried to pry Nick's arms from her waist and escape for the door at the same time. She managed to get a hold of the doorknob long enough to crack open the door before Nick pulled her back toward him.
But as he did so, the heel of his shoe caught the bathmat that had become bunched up during their struggle, and he fell backwards, bringing Sara down with him in the process. Their fall was broken by the collapsible laundry basket, but the basket was also broken by their fall, the plastic frame snapping as it collapsed in the direction it was not meant to be collapsed in.
"Uh oh." Nick had not only heard but also felt the crack of the plastic against his back.
"Make that a double 'uh oh.'" Sara held up a towel bar that she had reached out to grab to break her fall, which was no longer attached to the wall.
Nick raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so now you can pull down a towel bar with one hand?" he teased, referring to a case they'd had a while back when Sara couldn't pull down a towel bar with two hands and all her weight.
Sara smirked but her expression quickly turned serious. "What are we going to do?" She felt terrible about the damage they'd done to Catherine's bathroom.
"We'll just buy her some new stuff." Nick shrugged it easily off, having other things on his mind. "But since we're already down here," Nick's voice trailed off as he began planting kisses along Sara's neck, intent on making his way to her lips.
Sara momentarily forgot about the broken laundry hamper and towel bar when her lips connected with Nick's, but she still remembered that they were in Catherine's bathroom. When she thought she heard a noise, she abruptly pulled away. "Did you hear that?" She craned her next in the direction of the partially open door.
"Hear what?" Nick peeked over her shoulder to see what she was looking at.
"I heard something." Sara sounded acutely paranoid.
Nick rolled his eyes. "Relax, everyone's outside."
As Lindsey emerged from the house, Catherine immediately noticed her daughter was wearing a somewhat disconcerted expression and did not have the tie-dyed Build-a-Bear she had gone into the house to retrieve. "Linds, what's wrong?"
"Nothing." Lindsey's response was too quick to be truthful.
Catherine raised an eyebrow in warning. "Lindsey." Her tone was firm.
"Uh, we need a new laundry hamper."
"Why?" Catherine was a bit surprised by Lindsey's response, which was far from anything she'd expected to hear.
"It's broken."
"You broke it?"
"No," Lindsey answered.
"Well then who did?" Catherine asked, her daughter's roundabout explanation wearing her patience thin.
"Hey guys, what's going on?" Nick tried to keep his voice as casual as possible as he came outside with Sara.
"They did," Lindsey answered her mother's question as she pointed at Nick and Sara.
Catherine let out an exasperated sigh. "Lindsey, don't go blaming other people, if you broke the laundry hamper, just tell the truth, I won't get upset."
"But I saw them," Lindsey insisted.
Nick and Sara both felt waves of panic running through them.
"You saw them?" Catherine asked in clarification.
"Yeah," Lindsey replied adamantly.
Catherine looked at Nick and Sara. She spotted something clinging to the back of Nick's shirt. "Alright, I believe you," she conceded to her daughter as she peeled a zebra printed sock from Nick's back, a sock she distinctly remembered Lindsey wearing a few days earlier.
"Uh, Sara and I are going to take a quick trip to Home Depot," Nick said. "We'll be right back."
Catherine looked at him curiously. "Why?"
"You also need a new towel bar."
- The End -