Part Two: Withdrawal

He doesn't see Sara again for a few days. He assumes she's made last-minute arrangements with Grissom to take a few vacation days, since Cory is in town.

What Nick finds unusual is that she doesn't call, or stop by, and Nick's days are filled with Sara withdrawal. When it occurs to him to call her, he assumes she is busy, and this welcomes all sorts of unbidden images into his mind.

Naughty ones.

She's his best friend, and even though he did act like an ass the last time they were together, and even though Officer Boyfriend is in town, possibly keeping her busy, he still thinks it's strange not to hear from her.

Even if he doesn't deserve to. He knows, deep down, that he really was an ass.

He realizes that he has no life without her, and he spends all of his extra time at home on the couch watching the Spice Channel. He loathes himself.

When Sara finally does come back to work, the distance between them is like a chasm. She doesn't respond to his good-natured, albeit forced, teasing; she doesn't speak to him, or even look at him, and he is even more lonely than ever.

Sure, there's Warrick and Greg.

But they're Warrick and Greg. They're not Sara.

At the end of shift the two of them are in the locker room. Nick makes a last-ditch effort to salvage things, feeling as if they aren't right by the time he goes home, they might never be right again. The queasy feeling in his stomach is rolling, and his nerves are clawing at his insides, and she is still ignoring him.

"Sar," he starts, and she shoots a glare to silence him.

"You want breakfast? I'll buy," he offers, and he forces his smile not to betray him.

"I don't believe you," she mutters, slamming her locker with more force than is necessary.

"What?" His voice cracks.

"You have a lot of nerve," she spits. "The last time we went out together you were a total jerk," her voice is so full of rage that it scares him. She turns and leaves the room, and he is actually a little afraid to follow her, but he does anyway.

He waits to initiate conversation again until they are in the parking lot.

"Sar," he starts, "what did I do?" He knows.

She wheels on him. "What did you do," she screeches. "You were rude to Cory. You ignored us both at the diner. You've been pouting and jealous since I came home, Nick, and I didn't understand because it's not like we're together," she trails off. Her anger is running out of steam. "But I overlooked that," she says, "because I care about you and I thought you were just going through a rough time. But then you were so rude to Cory and to me. I just don't understand." She wipes angrily at the tears pricking her eyes. "And now you're being nice again," she says.

"Uh," Nick says. He's always been an eloquent bastard.

More like just your basic, run-of-the-mill bastard, he thinks.

"It's not like you to be so moody," she says, and she leans against Grissom's Tahoe.

Nick feels the force of her words in his knees. Suddenly he feels weak and pathetic and he sinks to the curb with a soft thud. "Sar," he starts, his voice strained, and he feels like an oversized infant.

She takes pity on his performance and brushes the curb with the fingers of her right hand before sitting along side him.

"I'm sorry, Sweets," he says. He knows he should say more, but really, what more is there to say other than he's sorry?

"I know," she says, covering his left hand with her right.

They sit together, on the curb, in the August sun for the next hour.

Quiet, but together.

Things gradually improve after that. They resume their morning breakfasts. Nick makes a renewed effort to go to the gym in the mornings after his breakfast has settled, sometimes dragging Sara with him.

She loathes the gym, but is a good sport. She likes to swim, and she does laps while he does some lifting and strength work. Sometimes after breakfast they go to his house instead and he makes her sit on his feet while he does hundreds of stomach crunches. She sits on his back one day when he decides to do pushups, a decidedly intimate activity, to be sure.

He laughs to himself. He is not one to complain when beautiful women want to ride him.

Sara would kill him if she knew the inner workings of his deviant mind.

They don't speak about the day that Cory arrived in Vegas. In fact, she stops talking about him altogether.

There's an old song about some things being better left unsaid, and Nick assumes that this is the case, but it's not entirely true.

One slow morning Nick walks into the break room for a cup of coffee and overhears a very interesting conversation.

Sara and Catherine are standing around the microwave oven, their backs to the door, waiting for a bag of Orville Redenbacher's movie theater butter popcorn to finish popping. Sara is speaking.

"He thought Nicky was a girl," she's saying. "He thought that this Nicky that I spend all my time with was a woman. He was pretty shocked when he met him." She giggles uncharacteristically. "Then when they met, he thought maybe he was gay."

Nick furrows his eyebrows.

Catherine is laughing, now. "Our Nicky?"

"I know, definitely not gay. But he didn't understand how a man would want to go shopping and stuff with me without, you know, making a move," she says. "He didn't understand that I'm not Nicky's type."

Catherine looks skeptical. "What makes you think you're not," she asks.

Sara blows a raspberry at the other CSI. "Whatever," she says. "Nicky's women are not human. They're like those alien women in the pleather jumpsuits from 'Dude, Where's my Car?'"

Catherine's expression seems to indicate that she's never seen the masterpiece of cinematic genius that is 'Dude, Where's my Car?'

If Sara notices Catherine's confusion, she ignores it. "Anyway, we had a huge fight over it. He wanted me to stop hanging out with Nick so much. You know how I am, no one can tell me what to do. He was pissed, I was pissed; it was a giant mess. He left the next day. I don't know what to do, Cath," she says, and her voice warbles a little.

Catherine gives her shoulder a rub. "Have you talked to him since?"

"A little. We're both angry, and until one of us caves we're just stuck, I think. We're both so stubborn. He was so mad he got back in his car and drove for three days straight."

The microwave beeped, signaling that the popcorn was ready. Nick crept out of the break room, careful not to make a sound, and went back to the lab to check on some results.

The coffee could wait.