A Fool for Lesser Things

Part Two - Spells

(A Little Murder)

He knew he was late when he walked into the bar, but he was pretty sure that it wouldn't matter. After all, Nick Stokes was hardly a model of punctuality himself, usually having got himself tied up in the crime lab, chasing some lead or other, putting in more overtime than was good for any sane person. Not that, Lockwood reminded himself with a grimace, he had much room to talk. He'd ratcheted up more than his fair share of overtime this month too, though none of them had been as unpalatable as the dead cheerleader in the high school football field. He'd seen hundreds of homicides in his career, but it always seemed to be worse when there was a kid involved. This one had been even worse, involving evisceration and PCP and kid perpetrators who didn't even know what they'd done. Cuffing a seventeen year old girl whose body was shaking, either from sickness or from sobs of horror at what she'd done had been a decided low point in his career, and he still hadn't quite managed to banish the bad taste from his mouth, even now.

He did have to admit though, as he sat down at the bar and ordered himself a beer, that there had been one advantage to working that particular case, that being the large amount of time that he'd got to spend with a certain brunette CSI. He'd met Sara on numerous occasions, had worked more than one homicide with her and some of the other members of the CSI graveyard shift. But he'd never worked a case one-on-one with her before, had never spent quite so much time with her, and he had to admit that what he'd seen intrigued him.

He knew, of course, that she had to have a pretty strong stomach. She must have, just like he had; otherwise, they never would have made it as far as they had in their line of work. That being said, when he'd seen the state of Mandy Kirk's body, he'd had to look away for a second, had to fight hard against his gorge rising. Not for Sara such matters though. A look of disgust and shock may have passed across her face, but she'd hunkered right down, got straight to work. He'd had to admire that about her.

Just like he'd had to admire her dry humour, the first evidence of which he'd seen when they walked through the halls of Tuscadero High School, talking about soccer bunnies and how out of touch the Principal was with teenagers' sexual habits. Her demeanour had sobered somewhat, humour, dry or otherwise, vanishing when they'd seen the shrine to Mandy Kirk that had sprung up at her locker, but by the time they'd visited Chuck Darwell at the hospital, it had returned again. He'd seen the evidence of that himself when he'd handed her a bag filled with Chuck's stomach contents, seized as part of the public domain. He'd expected her to act disgusted - he was fairly disgusted himself just holding it, couldn't imagine having to actually slough through it - but she'd just quirked one eyebrow upward, a cheeky smile on her face. "Some men give candy and flowers," she quipped wryly, and for the first time since that god-awful find at the football field, he'd felt a broad smile fighting to break across his face.

"I like to be different," he'd told her, and they'd walked back to the car, discussing what might happen if she found something to prove that Chuck was involved, wondering how someone could do something like that.

They'd got their answer all right, when she'd called his cell a few hours later. She'd opened up with something about how Greg Sanders had asked her what it was like to be driving someone else's porcelain bus, and how she'd heard every smart comment under the sun about it. He'd apologised half-heartedly for his part in her having to do that, though he'd got a little bit of a kick out of listening to her rant about it. She'd turned serious when he'd asked her if she'd found anything else, and she'd told him about the tox report, and the twenty milligrams of PCP that they'd found, along with the piece of human skin. He'd felt his stomach turn over at that, and had made himself think of something else, anything else other than the image that that called up, and to his surprise, had only been able to chase it away by picturing her face as she'd made that quip to him in the hospital.

He hadn't wanted to think about that too much, not when he still had to close the case with her, but when he'd gone back to the hospital with her, and later, when he'd been in the locker room with her as she talked to Nicole Exmoor, he'd seen a different side to Sara Sidle. Yes, this might be a woman who was able to look at the most terrible wounds with barely a flinch, who took having to look through someone else's stomach contents completely in her stride. This might be a woman who was tough as nails, who knew how to get her job done. But, he also realised, this was a woman who was able to feel compassion for a couple of kids who had got high, got in way above their heads, and done something that they never would ordinarily have been capable of. A woman who spoke gently, almost apologetically, to them when she told them that they were going to be arrested. Whose words to him as they watched Nicole Exmoor being led away - "Hey, Cyrus, next time somebody says experimenting with drugs is harmless remind me of this." - had been uttered in a tone of such quiet pain that his palm had literally itched with the desire to place it on her shoulder or back as some small sign of support.

He hadn't though, knowing that she wouldn't appreciate it, knowing that it was going way over a line he had no business crossing.

Trouble was that in the couple of weeks since that case, he'd realised that he'd already crossed that line without even realising it, and that there was no getting back over the other side.

Not that he really wanted to.

He was so lost in thought that he jumped when a hand clamped down on his shoulder, turning as he looked at the man who was sliding into the stool beside him. "Man, you're lost in thought," chuckled Nick, his good humour as ever in evidence. Cyrus tried for a moment to remember if he'd ever seen Nick Stokes in a bad mood, failing utterly and dismissing the notion as unlikely. "Tough case?"

That, Cyrus decided, was one way of putting it, though he didn't mean it in the same way as Nick had. Deciding only to think about the case he was working on right then, and that he wouldn't mention Sara to Nick at all, he shrugged, and promptly dodged the question with an ease born of years of practice. He knew from long experience that very few people who asked how his day had gone really wanted to know. "Homicide's never a picnic," he said simply, raising his beer to his lips. "You?"

Nick waved to the bartender, indicating that he'd like a beer, and ordering another one for Cyrus while he was at it. "I was working with Sara and Grissom on that homicide at the Little People's Convention," he said, words that had Cyrus looking at him curiously, only to see Nick frowning. "I don't even know if that's the right grammar on that."

Cyrus decided to ignore his confusion. "I heard about that," he said instead.

Nick nodded his thanks to the bartender as he put down two bottles of beer in front of them. "Turns out the perp was the father of the fiancée of the murdered guy," he said. "He didn't want his daughter - who's a five foot seven stunner - involved with a dwarf." He took a sip of his beer, shaking his head. "My ex-girlfriends' fathers are looking better and better right now."

Cyrus could certainly relate to that one. "Mine too."

Nick snickered. "Sara was the only one of us who kept it remotely real - she told me that she'd much rather deal with getting skin cells from a rope than that cheerleader case you two worked on a couple of weeks ago."

"She said that?" Cyrus didn't even think as he spoke the words, and when he realised what he'd said, consoled himself with the thought that it had been Nick who'd brought up Sara's name. He himself hadn't gone fishing, the subject had come up naturally in conversation. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Nick chuckled, raising his beer bottle to his lips. "Oh, she's gonna be living off that one for a while," he said, taking a drink. "We went for lunch day before yesterday, I ordered a Caesar Salad? The woman turned green at the table, made me change my order. Said it was gonna be a long time before she could look at one again."

Cyrus, having heard from Sara in graphic detail the reason why, waved his hand to forestall any further details, but he couldn't keep from looking at Nick askance. "Sara doesn't strike me as the squeamish type," he mentioned, and Nick shrugged.

"Oh she's not, but there's a line, you know? And I think she just found herself on the other side of it." He took another sip of his beer, shaking his head as he put it down. "Don't get me wrong, Sara can hang with the best of us when it comes to gore. She's pretty cool."

"She certainly is." Cyrus didn't think that there was anything wrong with him saying that. After all, he was only agreeing with Nick about a mutual acquaintance of theirs; there was nothing wrong with that, surely? But he realised too late that there must have been something in his tone to give him away, or maybe Nick was just unusually perceptive, because he turned his head sharply to look at Cyrus, eyes narrowed in suspicion. He didn't say a word at first, just stared hard, leaving Cyrus to ask, "What?" He didn't mean to sound so defensive, and mentally kicked himself.

"Don't tell me…" Nick drew each word out slowly, carefully, as if he was giving each word time to settle in his brain, giving himself time to come to terms with his discovery. "You don't…" He held Cyrus's gaze for a moment longer before a big grin split his face, and he looked down at the bar, chuckling. "Another one?" He was talking to himself more than Cyrus, incredulity written all over his face. "What is it about this woman?"

Cyrus frowned, completely lost. "Stokes, you want to speak in English there?"

Nick shook his head again. "Sorry man," he said, doing his best to sober up, but his lips still twitched irrepressibly. "I just never expected you to fall under her spell too."

"Under her spell?" Cyrus recognised the words, but the context was lost on him still.

"I'm making it sound worse than it is," Nick told him. "Fact is, Sara lives for her work. Doesn't sleep, maxes out on overtime, lives in the lab… and yet for some reason, every guy she comes across seems to fall head over heels for her." Putting down his beer, he started ticking them off on his fingers. "David the assistant coroner would do anything to get near her. Greg in DNA? First time he saw her, his eyes nearly came out of his head, and it's not gotten better. Bobby Dawson in Ballistics lights up when she walks in, and if I didn't know better, I'd swear Archie's taken a bit of a shine to her…" His voice trailed off as he pondered the various other suitors of Sara Sidle, and Cyrus couldn't help but draw the obvious conclusion. It was something that he'd noticed about the two of them the first time that he'd ever met Sara, when they were all working Chief Rittle's murder. He'd been at the CSI lab, trying to find Brass for something that he couldn't even remember now, and on his travels, he'd passed by the fingerprint lab, had heard Nick's voice coming from the room. Figuring he might know where Brass was, he'd gone in to ask, recovering quickly when he'd seen that Nick wasn't alone. Nick had told him that he hadn't known where Brass was, but he'd introduced him to Sara, who'd given him a ready smile and apologised for not shaking his hand. "Gloves and fingerprint powder," she explained, and he'd understood. Nick had teased her though, said something about her lack of manners and how he couldn't take her anywhere, which had led to Sara protesting, and some pretty decent dinner theatre.

Cyrus had thought at the time that it was just a teasing, brother-sister vibe. Now he wasn't so sure. So he asked.

"And where do you fit into this?"

The instant the words were out of his mouth, he heard how they sounded, and he didn't blame Nick when he looked sharply at him, eyes wide. "Man, you do have it bad," he pronounced flatly. "Sara's like a sister to me. Nothing more, nothing less."

There was too much honesty in the other man's eyes for Cyrus to do anything but believe him, so he nodded. "So she's seeing someone then?" Because a woman like that, with all those guys falling over her, would have to be.

So he wasn't surprised when Nick nodded, but he was surprised at the pang that shot through his heart at the sight. "Yeah, a paramedic. Hank something… I'm not sure how serious though, she won't talk about him."

Cyrus nodded, lifting his bottle to his lips, draining the last of it, signalling the bartender to bring them another. "Paramedic?"

"Yeah, they met on the job…pretty funny story actually…" Nick launched into a tale about rappelling from a helicopter, and a dead decomposing body in a duffle bag, and while it wasn't really something that Cyrus was interested in hearing about, he let him talk. Because after all, he was talking about Sara, and that was something that did interest him, boyfriend or no.