Reaching Out
Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Spoilers: Minor for all of season one to be safe
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site Checkmate (http://helsinkibaby.topcities.com/csi/csific.htm) , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.
Summary: She was probably wondering what she was doing here, in his house, in his T-shirt, or at the very least, why she'd come here. He knew they were her thoughts because they were his too.
***
She was tossing and turning, moving restlessly, the bedcovers rumpled and half off her, her face contorted in a frown. Her lips moved silently, but every so often a sound would escape, something that sounded almost like a name, drawn out in a moan. He frowned as he looked at her from across the room, wondering if he should wake her, wondering if she'd wake herself, and if she did, just what she'd think about him standing there, observing her like that. The realisation that she'd undoubtedly be left even more on edge than she had been earlier on gave him the impetus to move towards the bed, laying down the steaming cup of coffee on the bedside table before bending and putting his hand on her shoulder.
Even in her sleep, she flinched at the contact, squirming away from him, and he frowned, noting the single tear that tracked its way down her cheek. She moaned something then too, and this time, he knew that it was a name, but not one that he recognised. He tightened his grip on her shoulder, just a little, and shook her lightly, saying her name.
"Sara, wake up."
She followed his instructions, springing to wakefulness with a gasp and eyes wide with confusion as she stared first at him, then all around her. He straightened up, instinctively knowing what was going through her mind. Probably wondering what she was doing here, in his house, in his T-shirt. Or at the very least, why she'd come here.
He knew those were probably her thoughts because they were his too.
He had just about managed to keep back his initial exclamation of surprise when he'd opened his front door, but only just. To say that she was the last person he'd expected to see standing there was something of an understatement. In all the time that they'd been working together, not once had Sara Sidle ever come to his home; in fact, were he still a betting man, he'd have laid good money that she didn't even know where he lived.
Working as a CSI though, and before that, working the casinos, Warrick had developed quite a poker face, and it had served him well here. "Sara," he'd said simply, leaning against the doorframe. "What are you doing here?"
She'd shrugged, both hands on her back, just above her hips, and shifted on her feet nervously, looking around her. "I just…I was driving around, and I realised where I was, and I just…"
Her halting words had made Warrick look at her closely, and he hadn't missed the slight red tinge to her eyes, or the way that her eyes had darted around nervously, never settling on any one thing, and certainly not looking at him at all. She'd seemed jittery, ill at ease, a far cry from the consummate professional that he saw all the time at the lab.
Most of the time he'd mentally corrected himself. There were times when Sara could be hard to get along with - prickly was the word that he'd heard Catherine use to describe her, and he couldn't fault the choice. He'd certainly had more than his fair share of run-ins with her, and when she was in one of her moods, he'd usually made it a point to stay well away from her. Today though, it hadn't been the case that had Sara on edge, and no-one knew just what had yanked her chain. All they knew was that she'd come in at the start of the shift with a chip on her shoulder the size of an iceberg, and by shift's end, everyone knew about it. Grissom had been hovering around Sara like a concerned mother hen, just waiting to see a chink in her armour to talk to her about it. Catherine and Nick, who, unlike himself and Grissom, hadn't been working with Sara and thus were spared the worst of her mood, were nonetheless walking on eggshells around her. As for poor Greg, he'd made one innocent, although slightly off-colour comment about nothing of consequence, and she'd filleted him for it, to the extent that the normally ebullient lab tech was sticking to yes and no answers with her, for fear of being on the receiving end of another diatribe.
Warrick had stayed on the periphery, as was his habit, watching, observing, but not interacting, keeping things strictly business, letting her have her space. He was trying not to become involved with the problem, because whatever was wrong, it was Sara's deal, not his, and she'd work it out in her own time.
Then he'd opened his door and there she was.
He'd been staring at her while she'd talked, and she'd broken off suddenly, shaking her head, rubbing her forehead with one hand. "Look, I shouldn't have come, I'm sorry I interrupted you…" She'd turned to walk away, and had taken a couple of steps before he'd known what he was going to do.
"Sara."
It was hard to say who'd been more surprised when he'd called after her. But she'd stopped nonetheless, turning back and looking at him curiously.
"I was just going to cook something." A long pause. "You hungry?"
She hadn't moved for a moment, then a slow smile had spread across her face, and once again, Warrick's well-practised poker face had been all that had saved him. He hadn't seen Sara smile like that all day, and before that only rarely. "That sounds good," she'd told him, walking back up to his front door.
He'd stepped back to let her in, closing the door behind them. Once inside, he'd headed back to the kitchen, to his interrupted work, and she'd followed him in, pausing to look around the living room. "This is a nice place," she'd called to him after a few minutes, and the words, the genuine surprise in her voice had him leaning back so that he could see through the connecting doorway to look at her. She'd been pacing the room, inspecting the paintings on the wall, the photos on the tables, her eyes slightly narrowed in concentration. He'd walked enough crime scenes with her to know that she was cataloguing everything, weighing the evidence, trying to see if her image of him gelled with this house that he was living in.
"Yeah," had been his only answer before he moved back to his cooking.
He hadn't looked up until he'd heard footsteps, and when he'd glanced over to the doorway, she was there, leaning against the frame, the same posture he'd adopted when he first opened the door to her. "It's not what I expected. This place."
He'd chuckled. He got that a lot. "What did you expect?" He had a fairly good idea, but he was curious as to how she'd answer the question.
"Typical bachelor pad," she'd answered with a shrug and a grin. "Messy… fast food boxes all over the place, clothes everywhere…" The opposite to what she'd found in fact.
"This was my grandmother's house," he'd explained, and she'd nodded in sudden understanding, her mouth forming a silent "Ah." "I grew up here," he'd added after a second. "I never knew my dad, he split before I was born. Mom and I lived here with Grams, until I was seven." He'd had to concentrate very hard on the frying pan then, his throat closing suddenly, which surprised him. It had been a long time ago after all; he didn't know why he was having trouble talking about it now.
"What happened then?" Sara's voice had gone very quiet, almost timid.
"My mom was killed in a car accident. Drunk driver." He could still remember being woken in the night by his grandmother's screams, still see her standing in his bedroom door, silhouetted by the lights of the hall behind her, getting ready to tell him that his mother was never coming home.
"I'm sorry."
"It was a long time ago," he'd shrugged. "Grams raised me after that…and when she died, I got this place."
She'd stepped into the kitchen, again taking everything in as she moved over to the table, sitting down. "And you never wanted to move? Make a new start somewhere else?"
"Nope." He'd considered it a couple of times, but only briefly. "This is home." He'd turned to her, plate in hand, and put it down on the table in front of her. "There you go."
Her nose had wrinkled as she sniffed the omelette he'd put in front of her. "This smells really good," she'd exclaimed, and he'd raised an eyebrow at the surprise in her voice.
"Gram's secret recipe," he'd told her, choosing not to tease her about her lack of confidence in his culinary abilities. There had been something brittle about her at that moment that he'd never seen, and he hadn't wanted to upset her. "There's soda in the fridge, help yourself."
She had, getting one for him while she was at it, and he'd joined her at the table. The two of them had eaten in near silence, the only sound in the room the clink and scrape of cutlery against china. When both plates were empty, he'd picked them up, putting them into the dishwasher and turning it on. Turning, he saw that she'd already left the table, and the muted sounds of the television spoke of channels being rapidly flipped through. She'd been moving through them so quickly that he couldn't make out what was on each one, but she hadn't slowed down, nor had she looked over at him when he sat down on the couch beside her.
"You ok?" he'd asked her after she'd cycled through all the channels twice. The hard set of her jaw relaxed only slightly when she looked over at him briefly, giving him a quick, totally insincere grin.
"Just looking for a little good TV in an uncivilised world," she'd shrugged, turning her attention back to the set.
He'd considered asking her more, then thought better of it, instead following her gaze to the television, reaching out and grabbing the remote from her when he saw a flash of something whizzing by. Her indignant cry had him stifling a grin; at least something had penetrated whatever suit of armour she'd put on, but all he'd said was "What? Don't tell me you don't like Happy Days." Sure enough, after zapping back down, there had been the Fonz in all his glory, arguing with an impossibly young Ron Howard, back before Hollywood stardom had beckoned him.
"You?" Her voice had been frankly sceptical, and when he'd risked a glance over at her, both eyebrows had been raised. "You like Happy Days?"
"The Fonz?" The name alone had been in the form of a question, and she'd stared at him for maybe five seconds before amusement got the better of her, and she burst out laughing. But she'd leaned back against the couch cushions, legs curled up underneath her, and she'd looked at the show without further comment.
When the episode had ended, he'd looked at her again, and this time, it had been his turn to chuckle to himself. Her head had been resting against the back of the couch, her body turned so that she faced him, eyes closed. He'd noticed for the first time the dark circles under her eyes, wondered when it was that she'd last had a good night's sleep. He'd hated to disturb her, but sleeping all pretzeled up like that was no good for anyone, so he'd reached out, touching her shoulder gently. The touch had been enough to have her blinking, and she lifted her head slowly. "What time is it?" she mumbled.
He'd glanced at his watch. "Time we were both getting some sleep before the shift," he'd admitted.
She'd nodded sleepily, sitting up properly on the couch and rubbing her eyes. "I should go."
"Oh no." His response had been immediate, and she'd looked at him sharply, frowning in curiosity. "You think I'm going to let you drive through Las Vegas falling asleep at the wheel?" A tired smile had crossed her face, and he'd continued, keeping his voice as normal as possible. "Knowing my luck, you'd get yourself into an accident and I'd have to explain to Catherine and Nick why we were doing overtime covering your work." She'd rolled her eyes as he stood, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. "C'mon, you can have the guest room."
"You'd better be careful Warrick," she'd told him quietly, following him up the stairs. "People are gonna think that you like me."
He'd chuckled. "Not much chance of that," he'd muttered teasingly, opening the door for her. "I'll get you a T-shirt or something…"
When he'd come back, he'd found her sitting on the bed, back ramrod straight, knees locked together, her hands joined in her lap. He'd given her the shirt and she'd given him a tight smile in response. If it had been supposed to reassure him, it had failed spectacularly. "Bathroom's down the hall," he told her. "I'll call you later."
She'd nodded, but hadn't otherwise moved, and he'd left her there like that, not knowing what else to do. Her voice had stopped him at the door, the sound of his name a quiet shout. He'd turned to look at her, but her gaze was fixed on the carpet. "Thank you."
He'd wanted to ask her if she wanted to talk; he'd wanted to ask her what was bothering her; he'd wanted to get her to open up to him.
Instead he'd gone to his room and tried to get some sleep. He'd succeeded too, waking before the alarm went off, showering and dressing, but not waking Sara, not until he'd made the first pot of coffee. He'd knocked first, but she hadn't responded, and that had been when he'd opened the door millimetre by careful millimetre, moving to wake her when he'd seen her restless sleep.
"It's ok," he found himself saying now; anything to fill the silence in the room, silence broken only by her ragged breathing. "It was just a dream."
"Yeah…" She took a deep breath, sitting up properly and drawing her knees up to her chin. "Just a dream."
"There's plenty of time before the shift," he told her. "I brought you coffee-" He pointed to the bedside table. "-And there's fresh towels in the bathroom." Her only movement was to draw her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them, resting her cheek against her knees and closing her eyes. "I'll be around," he told her, wanting to give her some space, turning to leave.
He was stopped in his tracks by her hand closing around his wrist, and when he looked at her, her dark eyes were wide pools of hurt and confusion. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, shaking her head.
He sighed. "Move over," was all he said, and she complied, scooting over to give him room to sit on the bed, back against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle.
She dropped his arm, ending up sitting curled up in a ball, as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible. Warrick waited for her to speak first, knowing that the worst thing that he could do right now was to rush her. Still, her first words weren't what he expected. "Were you an only child?"
"Yep. Just me and Grams."
She nodded slowly. "I have two brothers. Paul and Daniel. And one sister. Shona."
The last name made him blink, because that was the name that he'd heard her say as he tried to wake her up. "You guys close?"
"Twins," she told him. "Identical. Right up until we smiled." He tilted his head, not understanding, and she looked at him, biting her lower lip so that he could see her two front teeth, tapping one lightly. "It was the only way that people could tell us apart, even some of our family. When you're a twin, people are used to seeing the two of you together, you're never just Sara. You're one of the twins, one of the girls. You get used to answering to a name that's not your own. It used to drive us crazy, because of course, we could tell the difference just fine. When we got older, we started having fun with it, especially when we got to college. I was at Harvard, she went to Berkeley, and when we'd visit one another, sometimes we'd dress the same on purpose, just to see people's reactions. We both had this really long hair, down to our waists…we'd turn a lot of heads, because people weren't used to seeing twins so alike at our age…" There was a wistful smile on her face, and Warrick knew that she was ten years in the past, reliving those days.
"I was the scientist, she was the artsy one. She passed high school physics by the skin of her teeth; I was top of the AP class. We used to joke that even if I wanted to, I could never take her final, it'd be too obvious with the results. She wanted to be a teacher; elementary school. She would've been great at it too; she had a way with kids. She was the patient one; I was the one who flew off the handle. She used to get the job of calming me down. She was the only one who could."
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "It was our final year in college. We were hoping to get a place together in San Francisco after graduation. She'd be teaching; I was hoping to get a job somewhere, anywhere. It was early on a Thursday morning, I remember, because I had an early lab, and it was a killer. I remember bitching to my roommate, looking for an excuse not to go. There was a knock at the door, and when I opened it, it was my best friend Joely. She lived on the floor above us, and I was going to ask her what she was doing there that early, when my phone rang. It was my dad." She swallowed hard. "He'd called Joely first, so that there'd be someone there with me when he told me that they'd found Shona's body early that morning. She'd been raped and beaten and strangled."
"I screamed; at least, that's what they told me. They had to get someone from Student Health to give me something to calm me down. When that wore off, Joely had already taken charge; she'd packed my clothes, and her clothes and booked flights home for us. The school were very understanding, they didn't even care when I missed my lab that morning. The funeral…God, you've never seen anything like it. I kept waiting for someone to wake me up; tell me it had all been a dream. And what made it worse was that people kept on looking at me, and I knew that they were thinking that I looked just like her. That's what it's been like since then. Every birthday, every Christmas, every time that the family is all together, there's this missing piece, this hole, and I'm this constant reminder of who's missing. My grandmother couldn't look at me for the first six months; she just kept crying every time she saw me. Not that I blame her…I could hardly bring myself to look in the mirror."
There was nothing Warrick could say, and in lieu of words he reached out his hand, resting it on her back. When she didn't react to its presence, he began sliding it up and down slowly, feeling the heat of her body through the too-big T-shirt. She turned her head slightly so that she could see him then, giving him a sad smile. "There's so much in this job that's unnatural," she told him. "But nothing like that. All my life, I was one of two, part of a set, and then I wasn't anymore. Everywhere I went, everything I did, it just reminded me that she wasn't there. I still find myself picking up the phone to call her, to tell her something I know she'd laugh at. Times when I see myself in a mirror, just out of the corner of my eye, and I almost think that it's her standing there. "
The room was silent, save for the ragged sound of her breathing. "Did they find who did it?" Warrick finally asked.
Her lips twisted in a grimace. "Not officially." He must have frowned, because she closed her eyes for a second, as if she was summoning up the courage to speak. "She was dating this guy. Eric…I didn't like him much. I thought he was arrogant …overbearing …but she was crazy about him. Except, sometimes I'd call her, and he'd answer, tell me that she wasn't there, but he wouldn't pass along the messages. Or she'd say something that made me think everything wasn't as perfect as she was making out. It was never anything overt, anything obvious." She shrugged. "Put it down to a twin thing, I don't know. Anyway, about two weeks before, she called me, hysterical. Told me she'd tried to break up with him, and he'd gone crazy. Told her that he couldn't live without her. She'd calmed him down, wanted to know what I thought she should do. I told her that she should go through with it." She paused, taking in a shuddering breath. "I don't know if she did."
"You think he…"
"Oh, I don't think," she interrupted him, sounding more certain than she'd done since she'd begun talking. "I know. I know he did it. But there was no evidence. The police investigated; they even thought that he was guilty. But they couldn't prove it. He went on with his life…he stood right there beside us at the funeral, crying." Her jaw stiffened in anger. "I wanted to kill him."
Hearing this from the woman who had once told him and the rest of the shift that she could never take a human life spoke volumes to Warrick. There was only one more thing that puzzled him. "Why now?" he asked, and he felt her lungs expand under his hand as she took another deep breath, then another.
"My dad called me before the shift. I thought he was just calling to chat; I even tried to rush him off the line. Then I heard his voice…I've only heard him sound like that once before." She paused, swallowing hard. "It seems that Eric's fiancée has disappeared. That her friends reported her missing, that there were complaints of abuse against him…"
Her voice trailed off, and it was Warrick's turn to clench his jaw. "Damn," he muttered softly.
"Yeah." She turned to look at him then, and her smile was bitter.
"Does anyone else know?"
Sara shook her head. "I don't talk about her much. Not with people who didn't know us. It just…it still hurts too much." The last was a murmur, but he just managed to catch it. "I think that's why I came here last night. Grissom's the boss, you know? Nick, he'd be all over me with questions, and Catherine, she's got her kid. I just needed someone to… to listen, not to ask questions, just to be there. You know?"
"Yeah." Warrick's hand moved up her back to her shoulder, settling there for a moment and squeezing gently. "I know."
They sat like that for a long moment, then she straightened her back, lifting her head and rubbing her hands over her eyes. "Thank you," she whispered finally.
"Any time," he replied, giving her shoulder another squeeze before swinging his legs back onto the floor. "I was gonna make some pasta before the shift; carb up for the day. You want?"
She smiled, and he couldn't help but notice that she seemed lighter somehow, more relaxed. "What kind of sauce?"
"The kind that comes in a jar."
"The best kind." The last thing he saw before he closed the door was the smile on her face.
