Sara was still groggy when her alarm clock went off. She swatted toward
the noise with her hand, hoping to hit the snooze button, finally achieving
success after several tries. She snuggled her pillow closer and tried to
savor the last few moments before wakefulness fully overtook her and her
alarm went off again. She had almost fallen back asleep when she felt an
arm pull her against a warm male body and a pair of lips began peppering
her neck. She let out a yelp and almost bolted out of the bed before she
realized it was Nick.
She turned to face him and he looked at her curiously as she tried to get her heart rate under control. "Dammit, you scared the hell out of me."
Nick looked slightly confused. "I'm sorry?"
She started to laugh. "No, I'm sorry, baby. I forgot you were here. You startled me." She reached up and tussled his hair.
He wrinkled his brow. "I worked very hard on my hair, and now you've gone and messed it up."
She giggled. "Honey, I hate to be the one to tell you, but it was already messed up, but you're damn cute."
He grinned leaning towards her. "I'm glad you think so."
She ran her thumb over his lower lip. "I especially like the flags on your boxers, Cowboy."
Nick chuckled with a wide grin on his face as he leaned down to kiss her. He ran his hand down her arm and rested it on her hip.
Sara began to respond to his kiss and then suddenly stopped, uttering a choice curse word against his lips as her alarm went off again.
A puzzled Nick pulled back with a hurt expression on his face.
Sara pushed him away and sat up reaching over to turn off her alarm. "I'm sorry, Nick, but if I don't put my clothes in the dryer now I'm not going to have anything to wear to work." She stepped out of bed and glanced back at him raising an eyebrow in warning. "Don't even say it."
He lay back and raised his hands, not saying a word. A mischievous grin spread across his face.
She winked at him. "I'll be right back."
Nick could hear the dryer door slam a few minutes later followed by the hum of it's engine and a thwacking sound he assumed was a button hitting the sides of the unit as the clothes tumbled around.
Sara returned to the bedroom and crawled the entire length of the bed over the blankets before tugging them out from underneath her so she could crawl back under them.
Nick tried to restrain an amused grin.
She glanced at him and smiled. "What's so funny?" She slid herself under the blankets and lay back down facing Nick and hugged her pillow.
He laughed. "You are."
She wrinkled her nose. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, you practically fly out of bed when I kissed your neck earlier. Then I kiss you again and you swear. Nice choice of curse words by the way. And rather than walk to the side of the bed to climb in you crawl over the blankets only to have to pull them out from underneath yourself. You are damn cute, Sidle." He grinned at her, clearly amused.
She had a slightly embarrassed expression on her face. "I'm not used to people watching me when I wake up."
Nick lay on his side smiling at Sara. "I liked watching you wake up."
Sara let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh. "We have to get up soon."
Nick glanced over at Sara's clock. "We have a little time." He leaned toward Sara, his fingers trailing up and down her arm and he leaned in a kissed her softly.
As Sara pulled away she rolled her eyes. "Nick, we don't have time for what you've got in mind."
"Why do you say that?" Nick had a slight pout on his face.
She glanced at the clock and then back at him. "Trust me, you might enjoy it, but I know I wouldn't. What I have in mind is going to take a little more time than that."
"You're killing me, Sidle." Nick leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.
"You'll survive." She smiled back taking his hand in hers and lacing her fingers with his.
They lay there for a while talking about nothing in particular.
Finally, Nick noticed the time. He leaned over and kissed Sara on the forehead. As he pulled away he grinned. "I'm going to go take a shower."
Sara grinned at him as she watched him and his Texas flag clad bottom head toward the bathroom.
A few hours later, both CSIs were in the midst of another nightshift. Catherine and Sara had been called out to a jewelry store which appeared to have been robbed, but there was also quite a bit of blood at the scene and no body. Catherine and Sara chatted amiably as they processed the scene.
"So you survived Lindsey and her friends." Catherine smiled at Sara.
Sara was dusting the remains of the smashed counter for prints. "Yeah, although we had a few bumps along the way. Chelsea started her period and thought she was dying."
Catherine wrinkled her brow with concern. "You should have called me, I had some stuff in my bathroom that I bought for Lindsey for that very reason."
Sara chuckled. "It's ok, I sent Nick to the store."
Catherine started laughing. "You didn't?"
Sara nodded. "It was either that or he got to stay and explain to this little girl what was happening to her. I don't think Nick's experience with women would have covered this one."
Catherine chuckled. "Yeah, that is one thing that you can't really substitute life experience for."
They continued processing the scene, and hours after they arrived, they finally packed up the evidence they had collected and returned to the lab.
Warrick and Nick had gone with Grissom to respond to a body dump in the desert. The more they looked at the scene though, the less likely they thought the body had been dumped and the less likely the victim had met with foul play, although they couldn't rule it out.
Under the hulk of a broken down car, some hikers had found a body that had similar characteristics to a mummy. Dry leathery skin, shrunken against the frame of the bones. What they could determine was that the victim was an older male and had apparently died of extreme exposure. An autopsy would provide them with more definitive information.
They spent the better part of six hours processing the area and removing the body. Once back at the lab, Nick and Warrick began the arduous task of trying to ID the body based on the clothes found on the body, the fingerprints Grissom raised during autopsy, and the wallet found near the body.
Warrick was trying to decide when to start asking Nick about where he's slept that day. He didn't want to do it around Grissom and until they were in the layout room looking over the clothes from the body, he didn't have a chance. "Hey, Nick, did you forget we were supposed to go to the batting cages this morning?"
Nick glanced up and looked at Warrick apologetically. "Sorry, man, it slipped my mind. I was really tired after chaperoning Lindsey's slumber party."
"How did that go?" Warrick queried Nick.
"Uh, it was interesting. Did you know that Sara had never been to a slumber party?" Nick looked amused.
Warrick chuckled. "Actually, I can believe that." Warrick decided to start pressing for a little information. "So they tired you out then?"
Nick nodded. "Yeah, I went home to crash, only this gal Sheila, the mom of one of Lindsey's friends."
Warrick started to laugh and cut him off. "I know who Sheila is. What did she do?"
Nick looked at Warrick and just shook his head. "This woman is unbelievable, and I don't mean in a good way either. She shows up on my doorstep with her daughter Kelsey as well as Lindsey and tells me that she needs to ask me something. Fortunately, she had at least enough sense to send them back to the car before she started throwing herself at me."
Warrick looked amused. "Did she use a grenade launcher?"
"More like a Saturn 5 rocket; you know the kind like they used in the space program." Nick started to laugh. "By the time I got her off my porch, I felt violated."
Warrick shook his head. "You're lucky. Cath told me that she cornered one of the male teachers during a parent teacher conference into a very compromising situation."
Nick just shook his head and turned his attention back to the evidence he was examining.
"I stopped by this morning to bring your cell phone back since we were supposed to go to the batting cages, but you weren't home." Warrick remarked nonchalantly.
Nick glanced up. "Oh, I went out for a while to throw hurricane Sheila off the scent in case she came back."
"Ah." Warrick just left the conversation at that. He chuckled inwardly, knowing he had far more information than Nick realized.
When Sara and Catherine returned to the lab, they stood in the locker room talking.
"I see Lindsey found a way to get you and Nick to buy her the most expensive pizza this side of Vegas." Catherine just shook her head at the younger CSI.
Sara tried to restrain the momentary panic that flashed in her stomach. "Uh, yeah, I guess I'm just a push over."
Catherine laughed softly. "Well, I guarantee you, if you have your own kids someday, you won't be such a push over or you'll go broke."
Sara made a mental note to talk to Nick about how long they planned to let Lindsey bribe them. "I'll keep that in mind." She smiled at Catherine and hoped that Lindsey wouldn't let the secret out before she and Nick went public.
"Well, we've got evidence to look at. I'll meet you in the layout room." Catherine shut her locker door and headed out of the locker room.
Sara finished stowing her things in her locker and shut the door. As she turned to leave, the door of the locker room open and Nick and Warrick walked in. "Hey, guys." Her smile was a bit bigger as she looked at Nick.
In Warrick's typically casual manner he greeted her. "Sara." A smile threatened to form on Warrick's face as he noticed Nick and Sara beaming at each other. He started to think back to see if he could pinpoint when things had changed between his two colleagues. "So I hear you survived Lindsey's slumber party."
Sara smiled. "It was an experience." She glanced at Nick, gesturing with her eyes that she wanted to talk to him.
Nick looked amused. "I thought for a while you were going to have a panic attack, Sidle."
Sara shot him a warning look. "Well, just be glad you didn't have to explain to Chelsea what was going on." Her words were loaded with double meaning.
Warrick paused and looked at Sara with interest. "What happened with Chelsea?"
Nick coughed and cleared his throat, hoping Sara would just leave things with the tamer version of the story.
Sara smirked at him before turning back towards Warrick. "She got her period. I sent Nick to the store. I didn't think that his experience with women would have covered this one."
Warrick started to chuckle. "Good call. Although, it would have been interesting watching Nick try and explain that to a little girl."
Nick raised an eyebrow. "I'll have you know that I have sisters and nieces, and I'm aware of the monthly female situation."
Sara crossed her arms in front of her body as if to challenge him. "Monthly female situation. I don't think I've ever heard it put like that before." She smirked. She glanced over at Warrick. "I need to go catch up with Catherine, I'll see you guys later."
Nick opened his locker and began stowing his gear.
Warrick glanced at him as he hung up his lab coat. "You wanna hit the batting cages after shift?"
Nick knew from Sara's expression that she wanted to talk to him, and he was hoping that they could do a little more than talk. He glanced at Warrick. "Uh, I think I might have plans."
Warrick's investigative skills kicked in. "Might have plans? What? Do you have some hot date or something?"
Nick tried to be casual. "No, I just have this friend that said they might want to get together and I just needed to check with them first."
"So do I know this friend? Maybe he'd like to come with us." Warrick continued in a cool manner, knowing that Nick was getting nervous.
"Uh, maybe." Nick mulled over how he was going to get out of this situation.
"Or is this friend a woman?" Warrick looked amused.
"Why are you so curious?" Nick raised an eyebrow at Warrick.
"Because you're hiding something." Warrick replied confidently.
"Why do you say that?" Nick regarded him suspiciously.
"Because you're acting like it. I'll meet you in the layout room." Warrick chuckled as he shook his head. He shut his locker and headed out the door.
Nick leaned against his locker and let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding and pulled his cell phone out of it's holster, punching in a number. "Hey, I need to talk to you. Yeah, I'll meet you there." He put the phone back in it's holster and headed out of the locker room.
She turned to face him and he looked at her curiously as she tried to get her heart rate under control. "Dammit, you scared the hell out of me."
Nick looked slightly confused. "I'm sorry?"
She started to laugh. "No, I'm sorry, baby. I forgot you were here. You startled me." She reached up and tussled his hair.
He wrinkled his brow. "I worked very hard on my hair, and now you've gone and messed it up."
She giggled. "Honey, I hate to be the one to tell you, but it was already messed up, but you're damn cute."
He grinned leaning towards her. "I'm glad you think so."
She ran her thumb over his lower lip. "I especially like the flags on your boxers, Cowboy."
Nick chuckled with a wide grin on his face as he leaned down to kiss her. He ran his hand down her arm and rested it on her hip.
Sara began to respond to his kiss and then suddenly stopped, uttering a choice curse word against his lips as her alarm went off again.
A puzzled Nick pulled back with a hurt expression on his face.
Sara pushed him away and sat up reaching over to turn off her alarm. "I'm sorry, Nick, but if I don't put my clothes in the dryer now I'm not going to have anything to wear to work." She stepped out of bed and glanced back at him raising an eyebrow in warning. "Don't even say it."
He lay back and raised his hands, not saying a word. A mischievous grin spread across his face.
She winked at him. "I'll be right back."
Nick could hear the dryer door slam a few minutes later followed by the hum of it's engine and a thwacking sound he assumed was a button hitting the sides of the unit as the clothes tumbled around.
Sara returned to the bedroom and crawled the entire length of the bed over the blankets before tugging them out from underneath her so she could crawl back under them.
Nick tried to restrain an amused grin.
She glanced at him and smiled. "What's so funny?" She slid herself under the blankets and lay back down facing Nick and hugged her pillow.
He laughed. "You are."
She wrinkled her nose. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, you practically fly out of bed when I kissed your neck earlier. Then I kiss you again and you swear. Nice choice of curse words by the way. And rather than walk to the side of the bed to climb in you crawl over the blankets only to have to pull them out from underneath yourself. You are damn cute, Sidle." He grinned at her, clearly amused.
She had a slightly embarrassed expression on her face. "I'm not used to people watching me when I wake up."
Nick lay on his side smiling at Sara. "I liked watching you wake up."
Sara let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh. "We have to get up soon."
Nick glanced over at Sara's clock. "We have a little time." He leaned toward Sara, his fingers trailing up and down her arm and he leaned in a kissed her softly.
As Sara pulled away she rolled her eyes. "Nick, we don't have time for what you've got in mind."
"Why do you say that?" Nick had a slight pout on his face.
She glanced at the clock and then back at him. "Trust me, you might enjoy it, but I know I wouldn't. What I have in mind is going to take a little more time than that."
"You're killing me, Sidle." Nick leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.
"You'll survive." She smiled back taking his hand in hers and lacing her fingers with his.
They lay there for a while talking about nothing in particular.
Finally, Nick noticed the time. He leaned over and kissed Sara on the forehead. As he pulled away he grinned. "I'm going to go take a shower."
Sara grinned at him as she watched him and his Texas flag clad bottom head toward the bathroom.
A few hours later, both CSIs were in the midst of another nightshift. Catherine and Sara had been called out to a jewelry store which appeared to have been robbed, but there was also quite a bit of blood at the scene and no body. Catherine and Sara chatted amiably as they processed the scene.
"So you survived Lindsey and her friends." Catherine smiled at Sara.
Sara was dusting the remains of the smashed counter for prints. "Yeah, although we had a few bumps along the way. Chelsea started her period and thought she was dying."
Catherine wrinkled her brow with concern. "You should have called me, I had some stuff in my bathroom that I bought for Lindsey for that very reason."
Sara chuckled. "It's ok, I sent Nick to the store."
Catherine started laughing. "You didn't?"
Sara nodded. "It was either that or he got to stay and explain to this little girl what was happening to her. I don't think Nick's experience with women would have covered this one."
Catherine chuckled. "Yeah, that is one thing that you can't really substitute life experience for."
They continued processing the scene, and hours after they arrived, they finally packed up the evidence they had collected and returned to the lab.
Warrick and Nick had gone with Grissom to respond to a body dump in the desert. The more they looked at the scene though, the less likely they thought the body had been dumped and the less likely the victim had met with foul play, although they couldn't rule it out.
Under the hulk of a broken down car, some hikers had found a body that had similar characteristics to a mummy. Dry leathery skin, shrunken against the frame of the bones. What they could determine was that the victim was an older male and had apparently died of extreme exposure. An autopsy would provide them with more definitive information.
They spent the better part of six hours processing the area and removing the body. Once back at the lab, Nick and Warrick began the arduous task of trying to ID the body based on the clothes found on the body, the fingerprints Grissom raised during autopsy, and the wallet found near the body.
Warrick was trying to decide when to start asking Nick about where he's slept that day. He didn't want to do it around Grissom and until they were in the layout room looking over the clothes from the body, he didn't have a chance. "Hey, Nick, did you forget we were supposed to go to the batting cages this morning?"
Nick glanced up and looked at Warrick apologetically. "Sorry, man, it slipped my mind. I was really tired after chaperoning Lindsey's slumber party."
"How did that go?" Warrick queried Nick.
"Uh, it was interesting. Did you know that Sara had never been to a slumber party?" Nick looked amused.
Warrick chuckled. "Actually, I can believe that." Warrick decided to start pressing for a little information. "So they tired you out then?"
Nick nodded. "Yeah, I went home to crash, only this gal Sheila, the mom of one of Lindsey's friends."
Warrick started to laugh and cut him off. "I know who Sheila is. What did she do?"
Nick looked at Warrick and just shook his head. "This woman is unbelievable, and I don't mean in a good way either. She shows up on my doorstep with her daughter Kelsey as well as Lindsey and tells me that she needs to ask me something. Fortunately, she had at least enough sense to send them back to the car before she started throwing herself at me."
Warrick looked amused. "Did she use a grenade launcher?"
"More like a Saturn 5 rocket; you know the kind like they used in the space program." Nick started to laugh. "By the time I got her off my porch, I felt violated."
Warrick shook his head. "You're lucky. Cath told me that she cornered one of the male teachers during a parent teacher conference into a very compromising situation."
Nick just shook his head and turned his attention back to the evidence he was examining.
"I stopped by this morning to bring your cell phone back since we were supposed to go to the batting cages, but you weren't home." Warrick remarked nonchalantly.
Nick glanced up. "Oh, I went out for a while to throw hurricane Sheila off the scent in case she came back."
"Ah." Warrick just left the conversation at that. He chuckled inwardly, knowing he had far more information than Nick realized.
When Sara and Catherine returned to the lab, they stood in the locker room talking.
"I see Lindsey found a way to get you and Nick to buy her the most expensive pizza this side of Vegas." Catherine just shook her head at the younger CSI.
Sara tried to restrain the momentary panic that flashed in her stomach. "Uh, yeah, I guess I'm just a push over."
Catherine laughed softly. "Well, I guarantee you, if you have your own kids someday, you won't be such a push over or you'll go broke."
Sara made a mental note to talk to Nick about how long they planned to let Lindsey bribe them. "I'll keep that in mind." She smiled at Catherine and hoped that Lindsey wouldn't let the secret out before she and Nick went public.
"Well, we've got evidence to look at. I'll meet you in the layout room." Catherine shut her locker door and headed out of the locker room.
Sara finished stowing her things in her locker and shut the door. As she turned to leave, the door of the locker room open and Nick and Warrick walked in. "Hey, guys." Her smile was a bit bigger as she looked at Nick.
In Warrick's typically casual manner he greeted her. "Sara." A smile threatened to form on Warrick's face as he noticed Nick and Sara beaming at each other. He started to think back to see if he could pinpoint when things had changed between his two colleagues. "So I hear you survived Lindsey's slumber party."
Sara smiled. "It was an experience." She glanced at Nick, gesturing with her eyes that she wanted to talk to him.
Nick looked amused. "I thought for a while you were going to have a panic attack, Sidle."
Sara shot him a warning look. "Well, just be glad you didn't have to explain to Chelsea what was going on." Her words were loaded with double meaning.
Warrick paused and looked at Sara with interest. "What happened with Chelsea?"
Nick coughed and cleared his throat, hoping Sara would just leave things with the tamer version of the story.
Sara smirked at him before turning back towards Warrick. "She got her period. I sent Nick to the store. I didn't think that his experience with women would have covered this one."
Warrick started to chuckle. "Good call. Although, it would have been interesting watching Nick try and explain that to a little girl."
Nick raised an eyebrow. "I'll have you know that I have sisters and nieces, and I'm aware of the monthly female situation."
Sara crossed her arms in front of her body as if to challenge him. "Monthly female situation. I don't think I've ever heard it put like that before." She smirked. She glanced over at Warrick. "I need to go catch up with Catherine, I'll see you guys later."
Nick opened his locker and began stowing his gear.
Warrick glanced at him as he hung up his lab coat. "You wanna hit the batting cages after shift?"
Nick knew from Sara's expression that she wanted to talk to him, and he was hoping that they could do a little more than talk. He glanced at Warrick. "Uh, I think I might have plans."
Warrick's investigative skills kicked in. "Might have plans? What? Do you have some hot date or something?"
Nick tried to be casual. "No, I just have this friend that said they might want to get together and I just needed to check with them first."
"So do I know this friend? Maybe he'd like to come with us." Warrick continued in a cool manner, knowing that Nick was getting nervous.
"Uh, maybe." Nick mulled over how he was going to get out of this situation.
"Or is this friend a woman?" Warrick looked amused.
"Why are you so curious?" Nick raised an eyebrow at Warrick.
"Because you're hiding something." Warrick replied confidently.
"Why do you say that?" Nick regarded him suspiciously.
"Because you're acting like it. I'll meet you in the layout room." Warrick chuckled as he shook his head. He shut his locker and headed out the door.
Nick leaned against his locker and let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding and pulled his cell phone out of it's holster, punching in a number. "Hey, I need to talk to you. Yeah, I'll meet you there." He put the phone back in it's holster and headed out of the locker room.