Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Special Thank You:

To the Duchess of Hell and Saryn for the wonderful reviews. Katherine and Anna, for the extra bit of e-mail encouragement while ff,net was down.

Chapter Nine

Nick was more than a little shell shocked as he drove home. Nothing had prepared him for the events of that evening. That Sara was a Lieutenant in the Vegas PD was news enough, but he could live with that. He'd had the same conditions in Dallas where he had started out. To be a CSI you had to pass the police academy training and be commissioned as an officer. He been an officer first though, and became a CSI second.

Giving up the squad car and the badge hadn't bothered him, but he could easily see how Sara wanted to keep hers. His old patrol partner had been like that, and ten years on the force was an old habit. That didn't bother him as much as the sight of her wrist and the knowledge that Grissom had pushed her beyond what she was comfortable revealing and stretched her trust. He was brought up never to do that to a woman, will you nil you.

Maybe it was just the good 'ol boy Texan in him.

He knew Grissom had his own reasons for everything. He accepted that his boss knew more about Sara than he did, but this time he suspected it was just Grissom refusing to look 'outside the microscope' and realizing that people, even and perhaps especially Sara Sidle, had feelings and they could be hurt. He'd been careless and they were on the verge of loosing someone very precious to Grissom's carelessness and Griss knew it, too

When Nick left that morning he saw Grissom on his way out. He was no expert but the man looked as though his best friend had just died. To him she just had and he realized it too little too late. Nick pulled into his parking spot, not noticing the other black Chevy Tahoe parked in the far end of the lot.

He pulled out his keys, opened the lock, disabled the alarm, shoved the door open and reached for the switch. It was already on. He spun around drawing his gun and looking for an intruder or burglar and spotted Sara, red eyed and very despondent sitting on his sofa.

"Sara!" he dropped the firearm and went over to the sofa.

"Sorry," she said softly, "I…" her voice and her eyes dropped, she buried her hands in her hair and just shook her head.

"Hey that's OK," he dropped his stuff where he stood and knelt before the sofa in front of her. Seated as she was and given his extra inch or so in height, they were eye to eye with each other. He pulled her into his arms and sat next to her, shifting her onto his lap. "As long as you're here."

"You left your front window unlocked," she sniffled "Very stupid, anyone could have walked in."

"Well it wasn't so stupid today was it?" He rubbed her back, the same way he had before. She snuggled, completely unselfconscious for once, into his embrace.

"I don't do this" she said, muffled by his chest, "I don't cry, I don't break into other people's houses, and I don't need any man to make me feel better."

"Nope," he agreed "you're not doing this."

  "Okay," she said, "as long as we're straight on that." She sat there for a minute, not saying anything but just snuggling quietly. "He's just so oblivious. He has no clue about feelings, no idea that people can be hurt by his…"

"Callousness," Nick added.

"…stupidity!" she yelled, and sat up, bracing her hands on his chest. "I'm too heavy, scoot over."

"You weigh less than my dog back at the ranch, Ok?" He tugged her back, firmly "And you don't drool on my lap either."

Helplessly she laughed, halfway crying, but laughing nonetheless. "Let me up Nick, I need to stand on my own two feet for once."

"You stand on your own two feet too damn often; let someone else take care of you for once." Nick stroked her hair, "You wanna talk about it?"

"No," she said shortly.

"Ok,"

"I mean what right does he have to just disregard everything we've done together, just like that?" She squiggled again, facing Nick "We're like this" she crossed her index and middle fingers, "Or at least we were" she grumbled.

Foreboding began to fill Nick, for someone who just threw her badge in Grissom's face she seemed awfully concerned with him. "What is Grissom to you?"

"What do mean? He's like…" she sighed, pushing a tangle of hair out of her eyes, "I don't know, he's just Grissom, if you know what I…oh no" Understanding of what he was really asking dawned on her face, "We were never," she blushed, her cheeks heating "Not like that, I… we… um, not like, well, us" she said softly. "It…we…no."

"I glad to hear that," he squeezed her, "Very glad, I wouldn't be able to fight off Grissom if he really tried."

"Don't bet on it." She said so softly that he could barely hear it; her face was lit up like a Christmas tree. She buried her face in his shoulder and he let her regain some of her composure in peace. She was a little embarrassed at the admission, but Nick let it pass. They'd move beyond that point. She sighed again, deeply "What the hell did I do?"

"You lost your temper" Nick said simply "Rightfully."

"Did he say anything?" she asked tentatively.

"That we had a case to work on and that you weren't the only one with down time on the books." Nick shifted her weight a little, "I saw him coming out of his office before I left. It looked like, well, it looked like his best friend just died."

"He didn't say anything?"

"No," Nick dredged his memory "Just that in Frisco you need to be a cop to be a CSI, it's the same in Dallas, that's how I got started too. It was a bit of a surprise, but it made sense."

"Nothing about Deng Xao or Jack or the…incident?"

"Nope," he replied, "nothing. And it wasn't for lack of interest. I saw Catherine go into his office after you left and she came out shaking her head and cursing." He lifted her chin, "Not that I wouldn't mind being a fly on that wall."

"I owe you an explanation." She said reluctantly.

"You don't owe me a damn thing" Nick said reassuringly, "but you know I'd listen if you wanted to talk." 

"Griss and I have known each other forever." She squirmed out of his embrace, pulling herself to her feet. Nick let her go, she needed the space. "I graduated Harvard, came home, went to Berkley, started my Masters, and you-know-who just happened to be teaching the elective 'bugs and bodies 101'. I worshipped him, and he spoiled me rotten. He got me hooked up with the SFPD CSI unit. I lived with my old roommate, Deng Xao. Her parents owned a Chinese food place across the way from my parent's B&B. We went to Harvard together. She was a comp-sci major; we worked computer programming to make ends meet. She knew Grissom too; we'd get together sometimes and talk about the weirdest things." Sara went to the fridge, opened it and restlessly closed it again.

"Sounds peachy"

"It was," she began to randomly open cabinets, searching for something she couldn't readily identify, "Until I met Jack. He was a nerd, long hair, thick glasses, and a beard; the whole nine yards. He was so wild, we just had the…" her voice thickened, "We just had the most fun."

"Something tells me it didn't last" Nick got up, went over to hold Sara.

"I didn't know, but he had a coke habit. I never saw him doing it, but he got pulled in by the police. Jack asked me to put up for bail, I told him to go to hell." Sara restlessly fiddled with a button on Nick's shirt. "He didn't like that. He put up the cash himself, sold off some computer stuff, and used the rest of the money to do some lines. He came after me. Apparently he got ticked that I wouldn't put up for him."              

 "He did this," Nick stroked her back.

"Yup," said with a lightness that covered the hurt, "Handcuffed me with a cheap kiddie pair of cuffs and pulled off his belt. Grissom found me; I'd missed class. I went to the police academy after that. No one else knew, except Grissom and Deng, and she would die before saying anything. It was Ok, until some doped up suspect got out of police custody while I was on scene. He grabbed another officer's gun and put one through me before anyone could blink."

"Just like Holly, lemme guess, the EMS took off your shirt to treat the gunshot and found out."

"Yeah," Sara grunted, "Needless to say no one was happy. They treated me like a damn piece of glass, like I was some sort of victim. Captain wanted me to go to a psychiatrist. It was awful. Griss held my hand through that, but I couldn't stay there anymore. Internal Affairs started to get involved; I was put on leave…"

"Yadda, yadda, yadda, I was a cop, I know the drill"

"Let's just say it wasn't comfortable coming back. Grissom knew, he called me to Vegas and I came. I thought that he'd respect me enough to give me a fresh start, but…"

"He does, Sara," Nick soothed "He just doesn't think."

"He used to," Sara grumbled, "He's gotten hard over the years. I didn't see it when we were just talking over the internet or on the phone; he's not really the Grissom I was used to. He was open, well, more open, and he actually cracked a smile every one and a while." 

"So what are you going to do?"

"What do you do when you throw a long-time friendship and the job you love back into someone's face?"

"Go back," He urged her, "No one there will hold it against you. We all know he went beyond what he should of and Culpepper pushed you into it."

"I don't know," Sara sighed and pulled away from him, "I got time."

"We'd miss you," Nick stroked her cheek, "I'd miss you." Sara let her chin rest on his hand, but didn't respond, "Go sit down, let me make up some breakfast, Ok?"

 "Ok." She sat back down, and let Nick make her up a veggie omelette. They ate, companionably, in the 'living room' of his apartment. Clearing the dishes Nick glanced down the window into the 'garden' area where Sara must have entered the apartment. It was a safe place to live; there was a security system and a lock on everything, especially after that stalker incident. He hadn't locked the window, but the system had been on

"How did you get up here? There is a wicked rosebush under that window and even if it wasn't locked I had the system on."

"Hmmm?" Sara glanced up, "Oh, yeah, the window.  Um, standard economy type system, wired in the walls and along the bottoms of the windows, if the connection's broken the system's triggered, right? It works unless you can open the window and still keep the connection." She reached into the left boot, opposite the one she'd kept the revolver in, and pulled out a pair of slender folding knives. She used the tips to open the window, keeping a connection to the touch plates on each side and laid them, hilt to hilt, flat on the sill. With a metallic object touching the plates and each other the system never triggered.  

"Holy hell, you walk around like that all the time?"

"I don't like to be unprepared," Sara shut the window as carefully as she'd opened it, and removed two wraparound ankle sheathes from her left leg, "although I usually keep one of these babies in my kit."

"Why?"

"In Frisco we had a run of informants who ratted on crime scenes to gangs. They'd try to trash it before we could get anything and sometimes they didn't care if they had to take a couple of us out to do it. The chief ordered us armed 24-7, and I just got in the habit." She shrugged fluidly, "Besides look at what happened to have me come here, Holly Gribbs died when someone came back to a scene. Griss got attacked by the 'Strip Strangler', Catherine had to shoot him, you've been stalked and threatened, Warrick's had a few close calls, and it just makes sense to me to carry something." She snapped them shut and let the knives slide to the coffee table.

"You got a point," Nick stroked the knives, "Do you want to stay here or can I drive you home?"

"Truthfully?" Sara replied, "I don't want to go home, Grissom has a key and I know he'd come to try and talk to me. I doubt I could deal with that today. Unless you mind? I could…"

"No," he interrupted, "Stay."

"Thanks,"

"Anytime."