Title: Lullaby for an Insomniac
Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Spoilers: None.
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site Checkmate () , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.
Summary: What Sara does when she can't sleep…
***
She used to be proud of the fact that she didn't need much sleep, that she could get by for days on only an hour or two a night. It was great in college, when she could fit in both studying and partying, even better when she began to work, because she was always available for any job, no matter the hour, and she never complained about her lack of sleep. Her workmates used to tease her about it, yes, but with envious looks on their faces, wishing that they could be as fresh as she was with so little rest.
She never considered it a problem, not until she began to go home with someone on a regular basis, not until she'd be lying in bed, watching him sleep, her mind still whirring. Even then, she would have been used to that. What really started to bother her was that her lack of sleep bothered him, and not just because it freaked him out to wake up and find the other side of the bed cold and empty. He considered it unhealthy to sleep as little as she did, believed that it wasn't good for her, and she tried to tell him that it had never done her any harm, but his concern for her welfare slowly but surely turned what had been an advantage into something else.
Eventually, they realised that they'd have to compromise, and agreed that she'd try to sleep a little more if he tried to stop nagging her about it, and sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't, but he had his own ways of lulling her to sleep.
They found out about her favourite one by accident.
Her insomnia was always worse in the middle of a big case, her desire to stay at the lab, work all the hours in the day and night to catch the bad guy superseding any need for sleep that she might have had, and he always took it upon himself to drag her out of the lab, sometimes with threats of a fireman's carry, take her home, make her eat. On one such occasion, she insisted that she wasn't sleepy, and settled herself down on the couch, a book in her hand, and told him that he could go upstairs, that she'd follow him later. He snorted, green eyes glinting in equal parts amusement and frustration, muttering, "Picture that," under his breath. He hadn't gone upstairs, hadn't tried to make her go up either. Instead, he sat down at the keyboard in the corner, switching it on and running his fingers up and down the keys experimentally. "You want me to use the 'phones?" he asked, holding them up to her, and she considered it a second before shaking her head.
"Nah," she grinned. "I like hearing you play."
He smiled back at her before turning back around, fingers moving up and down in practised scales at first, and he hadn't said anything else. She'd spoken the truth to him that night; she did like to hear him play, and she didn't get to hear it nearly enough. She didn't recognise the first song that he played that night, but she put her book down midway through it, and she was trying to work out what the second one was when she realised that her eyes were slowly drooping shut. She tried to keep them open, running lyrics through her head, but the next thing she knew, there was silence in the room and a hand rubbing slow circles on her back, and she blinked sleepily up at him. "I fell asleep?" she asked, hardly able to believe it herself, and he'd just chuckled, helping her stand, and he'd practically had to carry her upstairs. Once there, she undressed quickly, clothes scattered haphazardly all over the floor, and she'd been in bed and asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.
And so it began.
She's grown to love nights like this, nights where she closes her eyes to the sound of his fingers running along the piano; and it's always the piano, never any of the other myriad sounds programmed into the machine. The piano was the instrument his grandmother favoured, it's the one he's always used, and it's her favourite now too. Sometimes she cranes her neck so that she can see his fingers flying deftly along, touch feather-light, lighter than even the touch of his hands on her skin, and she can almost feel his caresses as he touches the keys. He always seems to know just what to play to suit her mood, sometimes fast, carefree, whirring like her mind, before slowing, calming, soothing her frazzled nerves. Sometimes it's classical, the ghostly strains of Mozart or Beethoven wrapping themselves around her; other times, something more modern, something like the Beatles, or Billy Joel or Elton John, stuff he'd never admit to knowing, but that he plays for her because he knows she'll never tell. Sometimes, he even sings along, his voice deep and low, better than she would have believed. He saves that for the end of the recital though, and it's usually that that's the last thing that she hears before her eyes close and sleep overtakes her.
Sometimes, on really special occasions, he sings her favourite song to her, the one that always brings a smile to her face, Phil Lynott's Sarah. And while he's told her the story, that Lynott wrote it for his daughter, she knows that when he's singing about a girl called Sarah coming into his life and changing his world that he's singing about her. She sleeps then, only stirring when she feels a pair of strong arms going around her, lifting her, carrying her up the stairs and laying her on the bed. In a deliciously foggy state of half-wakefulness, she helps him divest her of her clothes before the covers go over her. He slips in beside her a few minutes later, presses his body close to her, gathering her in his arms, and she can hear the rhythmic beating of his heart, like the metronome downstairs, keeping perfect time. His fingers find the notes of the song on her flesh, his voice providing the music in a low hum, continuing her lullaby.
It's the last thing she hears as she drifts off to dream in his arms, and her last thought is to wonder how she survived without this for so long.