Thanks for the reviews! And here is the second chapter!
When Sara rolled over, she had to bite back a scream when Warrick's sleeping face came into view. After a few startled moments, she remember that all of her friends, minus Greg, had stayed the night, since they were all in various degrees of extremely tired the previous night. Her parents were sleeping soundly in her bedroom, and the Andrews were in the guestroom. Grissom, Catherine, Lindsay, Nick, Warrick and Sara were all camped out in the living room sleeping on blankets and thin foam camping mattresses. Maddie was the only one sleeping in her own bed in her own room. Trying to come up with a plan to get to the kitchen without waking anybody up, Sara rolled over on her other side and came face to face with the couch, as well as Nick's arm. Upon further circumspection, she realised that a feather was all it would take for him to fall off. Suddenly, Nick slipped off the sofa and fell on her. Although she had been making a rough calculation of his trajectory if he fell, she wasn't prepared for him to actually fall. This time she did scream, although it was muffled by Nick's backside in her face.
The slight ruckus was enough for Warrick to wake up completely. He opened his eyes just in time to see Nick literally smother Sara and roll over facing him, with a bit of saliva making bids for freedom from the side of his mouth. "Cute," Warrick whispered to Sara, who he assumed was awake, judging from the noise she had just made.
"Is he even awake?" Sara demanded, seeing how Nick hadn't moved since he fell and rolled.
"Nope. Out like a light," Warrick replied. "How'd that happen?"
"How'd what happen?" Sara whispered back, making her lowered voice sound harsher than she intended.
"How Nick came to be a wall in between you and me and our little conversation."
"He was hanging over the edge of the couch," Sara began as she tried to free her arm, which was pinned under Nick's side. "Can't get my arm out," she muttered. Warrick didn't say anything, just pulled Nick up enough for her to slip her arm out. "Thanks. Anyway, he looked like he was going to fall over, and I was thinking that a feather would be all it took. Who knew I had telekinetic powers?"
The unexpected joke caused Warrick to let out a guffaw. Nick, who had somehow been able to continue to sleep during his free fall and roll, opened his eyes suddenly with a fairly loud yell. "Jeez, Warrick!" he yelled, "Way to scare a man!" He suddenly was subdued again, before he asked with slight trepidation, "Man, wasn't I sleeping on the couch?"
"Yeah," Warrick replied simply, trying to convey to his friend that he thought he was being an idiot at that moment.
"So how did I get to be here between you and the couch?" Nick asked, unaware that Sara was lying behind him.
"Are you implying that I look like a couch, Nick?" Sara asked, hoping for a reaction. She got one in the form of Nick jumping nearly a mile in the air with a simultaneous turn.
"Sara, what were you doing there? What is this? Torture Nick Morning?" Nick whined as he faced his other friend.
"Something like that," Sara replied simply with a smirk. "And if I remember correctly, you were the one who fell on me."
"I FELL on you?" Nick asked incredulously.
"That would explain why you're not on the couch anymore," Grissom's groggy voice cut in.
"Come on, Nick, you're paid to be observant at all times, remember?" Catherine's voice added.
"Let me guess," Nick said irritably to no one in particular, "I woke up the entire house too."
"I would have to say you woke us up," Mr. Andrews, wrapped in his bathrobe, said from the doorway that led to the hall, with a paternal smile on his face.
"And you woke us up too sugarplum," Mrs. Sidle added from behind her husband who was now perched on the arm of the armchair.
"Uncle Nicky in trouble?" Maddie asked as she took advantage of the situation and began tickling him again. Lindsay woke up then and took part in the laughter as they watched Nick try to gently pry the toddler off of him before he darted out of the room.
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"Bye you guys! See you tomorrow night!" Sara called to Catherine, Lindsay, and Grissom. Turning around, she headed towards the washroom where Nick was currently hiding out. Knocking on the door, she called out, "You know, you can come out now. Maddie's grandparents took her to the park." She could have sworn that she heard Nick's relieved sigh from the other side of the door. The lock slid open and Nick's face greeted her.
"Thank god," he said as he wiped imaginary sweat off his brow, "thought I was going to develop claustrophobia in there." When Sara smirked, he continued with a bewildered, "What? The bathroom is smaller than your average closet!"
"No it's not," Warrick replied as he walked in from the living room. "And believe me, I know, since I had to measure all of them to get half of Sara's stuff into this place!"
"Hey!" Sara exclaimed indignantly, "That stuff you were talking about was Maddie's, and you guys bought most of it!"
"Point taken," Warrick conceded.
"Anyway," Nick continued after looking vaguely amused by his friends' banter, "I have to go. Promised Mandy I'd meet her for a matinee movie at 11. Thanks for letting us stay the night Sara."
As he made a move for the door, Sara decided to take advantage of the situation, and called out, "Nick, I hope you realise that it's already a quarter to eleven!" She and Warrick shared a laugh and a high five as they watched their friend run to his car and speed out of the visitors parking.
Once the laughter died down, Warrick looked at his own watch, shook his head when he saw that it was only thirty minutes after nine, turned to Sara and said, "I hope you do know that that was a very cruel joke you played on Nick there." Sara just answered him with a smirk. Warrick flashed her a quick grin and continued, "Then again, somehow, I seem to take a certain sadistic pleasure in doing that to our best friend."
Sara made a move to close the front door when the familiar voice called out, "Mommy!" And she saw Maddie running as fast as her little legs could take her. About two meters away from the front porch, she tripped on a crack and fell flat on her face. A wail reverberated through the complex. Sara and Warrick had started moving towards her the seconds before her foot caught the crack.
Warrick picked the sobbing girl up and sat down on the porch steps cradling her gently while Sara asked her worriedly whether anything hurt a lot. After a few minutes of incoherent babbling, they were able to ascertain that all Maddie had done to herself was get a scraped knee and a loose tooth.
While this mini-drama was unfolding, four pairs of parental eyes watched it with a critical eye. In all of their minds, they could not think of a better-suited family than this.
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"You sure you don't want me to come with you to the dentist's?" Warrick asked for the tenth time in a matter of minutes.
"I'm sure we'll be fine," Sara assured him, "Anyway, with the grandfathers and grandmothers coming too, she should be entertained long enough."
"Okay, if you're sure. Call me if you need anything, okay?" Warrick repeated as he gathered up his things.
"Yeah, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. Losing a baby tooth isn't a huge deal," Sara answered, "I'll see you tomorrow night?"
"Yeah, guess so, "Warrick said, suddenly getting a feeling he couldn't explain, somewhere between loneliness and dismay. "But maybe we'll see each other before then. I don't know, take Maddie to the park again?"
"Sounds good to me. Maddie would probably think the same," Mrs. Sidle said as she descended the stairs. Sara nearly gave herself a whiplash as she turned to face her mother who, until she spoke, had gone unnoticed by her.
"Mom, were you eavesdropping on our conversation?" Sara asked suspiciously.
"Maybe," was the obscure answer.
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While Maddie took her nap and her parents and the Andrews were exploring the casinos and the rest of the Strip, Sara was trying to catch up on the latest forensics magazine that she had been meaning to read for the past week. Her phone rang. "Hello?" she asked.
"Hey Sara, it's Warrick."
She was pretty surprised. Warrick rarely called her at home unless Grissom told him to bring her in on a case. "Don't tell me. 419 at some hotel?" Judging by the silence on the other end of the line, he was taken by surprise at her question.
"Actually, Sara, no, I wasn't calling about work," he replied after some time. For some reason, she felt a slight fluttering in her stomach, a fluttering of expectation that she couldn't quite explain. "Um, I was wondering if I could stay over at your place for a few days, 'cause my entire building's being fumigated to get rid of this bug problem and . . . well. . . yeah," Warrick stuttered towards the end.
"Well, sure, of course you can," Sara answered promptly, "but I do have to warn you that it's pretty jam packed in here right now. And I'm not too sure how well you can survive hovering grandparents, but sure, you're welcome to stay." After thinking about the situation for a little bit longer, she added, "I guess Nick doesn't have any space at his place huh?"
"Huh? Oh! Yeah, yeah, he's trying to impress Mandy or something like that," Warrick answered hastily, "So, it's all good with you?" At Sara's affirmative, he continued, "Okay, thanks, um, I'll be there in about an hour?"
As soon as they hung up, Warrick dialed another familiar number. "Hey, Nick, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"No man, what's up?" Nick asked, wondering if his friend was going to challenge him to a game of pickup basketball.
"I've got this favour I've got to ask you," Warrick replied vaguely, believing that the fewer people he had to involve, the better.
"Shoot."
"If Sara asks you why I couldn't stay over at your place, can you make something up, you know, give her a reason why you wouldn't want me over for a couple of days?"
Nick physically pulled the phone away from his face and stared at it for a couple of seconds before replacing it to his ear. "Okay, I can do that man, but why d'you want me to do that?"
Warrick sighed. He started pacing his modest sized apartment trying to figure out how to tell his friend what he needed to know without telling him everything. "Listen, man, it's like this: my place is going to be fumigated top to bottom over the next week or so, and, I don't know, I just have this sense of home at Sara's place." When he didn't get a response, he decided to elaborate a bit more. "What I'm trying to say is, I like going over to Sara's, and I don't want to make it look like I purposely went there, just so I can be there. Am I making sense?"
"No, Rick, you don't make any sense," Nick repeated, "but that's okay, I get the general idea. No one makes sense when they're in love."
"Hey!" Warrick protested, "I just said that I like going over to Sara's. I never said anything about love!"
"Didn't have to." And with the final word, Nick hung up his end of the phone call.
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Mrs. Sidle was given a pleasant surprise when she opened the door. On the doorstep stood Warrick Brown holding a duffel bag and a backpack. The wheels in her head began turning at a furious rate. "Moving in now, are we?" she asked pleasantly, like he was a Girl Guide selling cookies. Warrick's eyes bugged out at what she was implying.
"Mom? Who's at the door?" Sara's voice called out from what Warrick thought was the direction of the bathroom.
"A certain young man with chocolate coloured skin and grey-green eyes to match," her mother answered with a gleeful little clap that she tried to suppress, but didn't get past Warrick's observational skills.
"WHO?!" Sara asked again, obviously having no clue who her mother was referring to.
"Come in, come in," Mrs. Sidle said as she waved Warrick in the door. "Make yourself at home. I'll get my daughter to get out of the bathroom. Giving our little sugar cake a bath. I can always do that, can't I?" Before Warrick could get a word in edgewise, she was off again, reminding him of Sara when she was running with a case.
"I knew it was hereditary," he muttered to himself as he put the bags down and plopped down on the couch.
"What's hereditary?" Sara asked, walking into the living room, as she unsuccessfully tried to push the wet hair out of her eyes.
He was taken aback by the waves of emotions that went through him in the few seconds that he looked directly at her. She was half wet, most likely from Maddie splashing the bath water around, and generally looked like she hadn't seen the light of day for a month. Yet, despite all that, she looked more beautiful to him at that point then she ever had before. He tried to answer, but no sound came out of his mouth.
Sara was extremely tired, brushed off his silence and just waved off her question. "Never mind, you'll probably tell me again later." She made her way to the couch and dropped like a stone beside him. "So, how long do you think you're going to be staying?" she asked non-threateningly. After a few moments' contemplation, she added, "And where are you going to sleep?"
"Um, I might be staying for the next week," Warrick said sheepishly. "And I can sleep anywhere you can make room for me. I don't want to impose or anything."
"Well, you could have thought about that before you asked to stay over here!" Sara exclaimed jokingly. At his guilty face, she added, "War, I'm just joking!" and smacked him lightly on the arm to prove her point. "Anyway, I hear you can cook, so you can pay me back by helping me cook for this small army."
"You have it all thought out, don't you Sidle?" Warrick exclaimed. Sara just nodded.
Out in the hall, Mrs. Sidle also nodded her affirmative as she watched the interplay. "My husband doesn't call me Cupid for nothing!" she whispered to herself. It was going to be her life mission to set these two up.
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And here's chapter 2 for you! There should be a couple more chapters, and then it's back to the school grind for me!
Please review!
When Sara rolled over, she had to bite back a scream when Warrick's sleeping face came into view. After a few startled moments, she remember that all of her friends, minus Greg, had stayed the night, since they were all in various degrees of extremely tired the previous night. Her parents were sleeping soundly in her bedroom, and the Andrews were in the guestroom. Grissom, Catherine, Lindsay, Nick, Warrick and Sara were all camped out in the living room sleeping on blankets and thin foam camping mattresses. Maddie was the only one sleeping in her own bed in her own room. Trying to come up with a plan to get to the kitchen without waking anybody up, Sara rolled over on her other side and came face to face with the couch, as well as Nick's arm. Upon further circumspection, she realised that a feather was all it would take for him to fall off. Suddenly, Nick slipped off the sofa and fell on her. Although she had been making a rough calculation of his trajectory if he fell, she wasn't prepared for him to actually fall. This time she did scream, although it was muffled by Nick's backside in her face.
The slight ruckus was enough for Warrick to wake up completely. He opened his eyes just in time to see Nick literally smother Sara and roll over facing him, with a bit of saliva making bids for freedom from the side of his mouth. "Cute," Warrick whispered to Sara, who he assumed was awake, judging from the noise she had just made.
"Is he even awake?" Sara demanded, seeing how Nick hadn't moved since he fell and rolled.
"Nope. Out like a light," Warrick replied. "How'd that happen?"
"How'd what happen?" Sara whispered back, making her lowered voice sound harsher than she intended.
"How Nick came to be a wall in between you and me and our little conversation."
"He was hanging over the edge of the couch," Sara began as she tried to free her arm, which was pinned under Nick's side. "Can't get my arm out," she muttered. Warrick didn't say anything, just pulled Nick up enough for her to slip her arm out. "Thanks. Anyway, he looked like he was going to fall over, and I was thinking that a feather would be all it took. Who knew I had telekinetic powers?"
The unexpected joke caused Warrick to let out a guffaw. Nick, who had somehow been able to continue to sleep during his free fall and roll, opened his eyes suddenly with a fairly loud yell. "Jeez, Warrick!" he yelled, "Way to scare a man!" He suddenly was subdued again, before he asked with slight trepidation, "Man, wasn't I sleeping on the couch?"
"Yeah," Warrick replied simply, trying to convey to his friend that he thought he was being an idiot at that moment.
"So how did I get to be here between you and the couch?" Nick asked, unaware that Sara was lying behind him.
"Are you implying that I look like a couch, Nick?" Sara asked, hoping for a reaction. She got one in the form of Nick jumping nearly a mile in the air with a simultaneous turn.
"Sara, what were you doing there? What is this? Torture Nick Morning?" Nick whined as he faced his other friend.
"Something like that," Sara replied simply with a smirk. "And if I remember correctly, you were the one who fell on me."
"I FELL on you?" Nick asked incredulously.
"That would explain why you're not on the couch anymore," Grissom's groggy voice cut in.
"Come on, Nick, you're paid to be observant at all times, remember?" Catherine's voice added.
"Let me guess," Nick said irritably to no one in particular, "I woke up the entire house too."
"I would have to say you woke us up," Mr. Andrews, wrapped in his bathrobe, said from the doorway that led to the hall, with a paternal smile on his face.
"And you woke us up too sugarplum," Mrs. Sidle added from behind her husband who was now perched on the arm of the armchair.
"Uncle Nicky in trouble?" Maddie asked as she took advantage of the situation and began tickling him again. Lindsay woke up then and took part in the laughter as they watched Nick try to gently pry the toddler off of him before he darted out of the room.
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"Bye you guys! See you tomorrow night!" Sara called to Catherine, Lindsay, and Grissom. Turning around, she headed towards the washroom where Nick was currently hiding out. Knocking on the door, she called out, "You know, you can come out now. Maddie's grandparents took her to the park." She could have sworn that she heard Nick's relieved sigh from the other side of the door. The lock slid open and Nick's face greeted her.
"Thank god," he said as he wiped imaginary sweat off his brow, "thought I was going to develop claustrophobia in there." When Sara smirked, he continued with a bewildered, "What? The bathroom is smaller than your average closet!"
"No it's not," Warrick replied as he walked in from the living room. "And believe me, I know, since I had to measure all of them to get half of Sara's stuff into this place!"
"Hey!" Sara exclaimed indignantly, "That stuff you were talking about was Maddie's, and you guys bought most of it!"
"Point taken," Warrick conceded.
"Anyway," Nick continued after looking vaguely amused by his friends' banter, "I have to go. Promised Mandy I'd meet her for a matinee movie at 11. Thanks for letting us stay the night Sara."
As he made a move for the door, Sara decided to take advantage of the situation, and called out, "Nick, I hope you realise that it's already a quarter to eleven!" She and Warrick shared a laugh and a high five as they watched their friend run to his car and speed out of the visitors parking.
Once the laughter died down, Warrick looked at his own watch, shook his head when he saw that it was only thirty minutes after nine, turned to Sara and said, "I hope you do know that that was a very cruel joke you played on Nick there." Sara just answered him with a smirk. Warrick flashed her a quick grin and continued, "Then again, somehow, I seem to take a certain sadistic pleasure in doing that to our best friend."
Sara made a move to close the front door when the familiar voice called out, "Mommy!" And she saw Maddie running as fast as her little legs could take her. About two meters away from the front porch, she tripped on a crack and fell flat on her face. A wail reverberated through the complex. Sara and Warrick had started moving towards her the seconds before her foot caught the crack.
Warrick picked the sobbing girl up and sat down on the porch steps cradling her gently while Sara asked her worriedly whether anything hurt a lot. After a few minutes of incoherent babbling, they were able to ascertain that all Maddie had done to herself was get a scraped knee and a loose tooth.
While this mini-drama was unfolding, four pairs of parental eyes watched it with a critical eye. In all of their minds, they could not think of a better-suited family than this.
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"You sure you don't want me to come with you to the dentist's?" Warrick asked for the tenth time in a matter of minutes.
"I'm sure we'll be fine," Sara assured him, "Anyway, with the grandfathers and grandmothers coming too, she should be entertained long enough."
"Okay, if you're sure. Call me if you need anything, okay?" Warrick repeated as he gathered up his things.
"Yeah, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. Losing a baby tooth isn't a huge deal," Sara answered, "I'll see you tomorrow night?"
"Yeah, guess so, "Warrick said, suddenly getting a feeling he couldn't explain, somewhere between loneliness and dismay. "But maybe we'll see each other before then. I don't know, take Maddie to the park again?"
"Sounds good to me. Maddie would probably think the same," Mrs. Sidle said as she descended the stairs. Sara nearly gave herself a whiplash as she turned to face her mother who, until she spoke, had gone unnoticed by her.
"Mom, were you eavesdropping on our conversation?" Sara asked suspiciously.
"Maybe," was the obscure answer.
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While Maddie took her nap and her parents and the Andrews were exploring the casinos and the rest of the Strip, Sara was trying to catch up on the latest forensics magazine that she had been meaning to read for the past week. Her phone rang. "Hello?" she asked.
"Hey Sara, it's Warrick."
She was pretty surprised. Warrick rarely called her at home unless Grissom told him to bring her in on a case. "Don't tell me. 419 at some hotel?" Judging by the silence on the other end of the line, he was taken by surprise at her question.
"Actually, Sara, no, I wasn't calling about work," he replied after some time. For some reason, she felt a slight fluttering in her stomach, a fluttering of expectation that she couldn't quite explain. "Um, I was wondering if I could stay over at your place for a few days, 'cause my entire building's being fumigated to get rid of this bug problem and . . . well. . . yeah," Warrick stuttered towards the end.
"Well, sure, of course you can," Sara answered promptly, "but I do have to warn you that it's pretty jam packed in here right now. And I'm not too sure how well you can survive hovering grandparents, but sure, you're welcome to stay." After thinking about the situation for a little bit longer, she added, "I guess Nick doesn't have any space at his place huh?"
"Huh? Oh! Yeah, yeah, he's trying to impress Mandy or something like that," Warrick answered hastily, "So, it's all good with you?" At Sara's affirmative, he continued, "Okay, thanks, um, I'll be there in about an hour?"
As soon as they hung up, Warrick dialed another familiar number. "Hey, Nick, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
"No man, what's up?" Nick asked, wondering if his friend was going to challenge him to a game of pickup basketball.
"I've got this favour I've got to ask you," Warrick replied vaguely, believing that the fewer people he had to involve, the better.
"Shoot."
"If Sara asks you why I couldn't stay over at your place, can you make something up, you know, give her a reason why you wouldn't want me over for a couple of days?"
Nick physically pulled the phone away from his face and stared at it for a couple of seconds before replacing it to his ear. "Okay, I can do that man, but why d'you want me to do that?"
Warrick sighed. He started pacing his modest sized apartment trying to figure out how to tell his friend what he needed to know without telling him everything. "Listen, man, it's like this: my place is going to be fumigated top to bottom over the next week or so, and, I don't know, I just have this sense of home at Sara's place." When he didn't get a response, he decided to elaborate a bit more. "What I'm trying to say is, I like going over to Sara's, and I don't want to make it look like I purposely went there, just so I can be there. Am I making sense?"
"No, Rick, you don't make any sense," Nick repeated, "but that's okay, I get the general idea. No one makes sense when they're in love."
"Hey!" Warrick protested, "I just said that I like going over to Sara's. I never said anything about love!"
"Didn't have to." And with the final word, Nick hung up his end of the phone call.
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Mrs. Sidle was given a pleasant surprise when she opened the door. On the doorstep stood Warrick Brown holding a duffel bag and a backpack. The wheels in her head began turning at a furious rate. "Moving in now, are we?" she asked pleasantly, like he was a Girl Guide selling cookies. Warrick's eyes bugged out at what she was implying.
"Mom? Who's at the door?" Sara's voice called out from what Warrick thought was the direction of the bathroom.
"A certain young man with chocolate coloured skin and grey-green eyes to match," her mother answered with a gleeful little clap that she tried to suppress, but didn't get past Warrick's observational skills.
"WHO?!" Sara asked again, obviously having no clue who her mother was referring to.
"Come in, come in," Mrs. Sidle said as she waved Warrick in the door. "Make yourself at home. I'll get my daughter to get out of the bathroom. Giving our little sugar cake a bath. I can always do that, can't I?" Before Warrick could get a word in edgewise, she was off again, reminding him of Sara when she was running with a case.
"I knew it was hereditary," he muttered to himself as he put the bags down and plopped down on the couch.
"What's hereditary?" Sara asked, walking into the living room, as she unsuccessfully tried to push the wet hair out of her eyes.
He was taken aback by the waves of emotions that went through him in the few seconds that he looked directly at her. She was half wet, most likely from Maddie splashing the bath water around, and generally looked like she hadn't seen the light of day for a month. Yet, despite all that, she looked more beautiful to him at that point then she ever had before. He tried to answer, but no sound came out of his mouth.
Sara was extremely tired, brushed off his silence and just waved off her question. "Never mind, you'll probably tell me again later." She made her way to the couch and dropped like a stone beside him. "So, how long do you think you're going to be staying?" she asked non-threateningly. After a few moments' contemplation, she added, "And where are you going to sleep?"
"Um, I might be staying for the next week," Warrick said sheepishly. "And I can sleep anywhere you can make room for me. I don't want to impose or anything."
"Well, you could have thought about that before you asked to stay over here!" Sara exclaimed jokingly. At his guilty face, she added, "War, I'm just joking!" and smacked him lightly on the arm to prove her point. "Anyway, I hear you can cook, so you can pay me back by helping me cook for this small army."
"You have it all thought out, don't you Sidle?" Warrick exclaimed. Sara just nodded.
Out in the hall, Mrs. Sidle also nodded her affirmative as she watched the interplay. "My husband doesn't call me Cupid for nothing!" she whispered to herself. It was going to be her life mission to set these two up.
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And here's chapter 2 for you! There should be a couple more chapters, and then it's back to the school grind for me!
Please review!