Title: Femme Fatale
Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
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.
Notes: For the LiveJournal CSReports REM song titles challenge
***
Warrick is well aware that lab scuttlebutt has him and Catherine with one foot into the nearest bedroom, and he's well aware that there are plenty of men around who wouldn't mind being in that position. After all, Catherine is, by common consent, the beauty of the graveshift CSI team, those blonde hair and blue eyes, lithe body, confident attitude. Her past work experience only adds to the allure for many, and there's no mistaking the fact that woman is more than able to turn on the charm when she wants to, and sometimes even when she doesn't.
Yet, for all that, lab scuttlebutt has never had it so hopelessly wrong, on both counts, because for all Catherine's attributes, many of his fellow workers, have fallen under the spell of a very different woman.
Sara is taller, darker than Catherine, and not just in hair colour. She can be surly at times, prickly even, relentlessly dedicated to her work. She is headstrong, stubborn, and she moves with a furious stride, totally at odds with Catherine's dancer's grace. Nor does she have Catherine's easy, perfect smile; her gap-toothed grin more hard-won, more sought after because of that.
Warrick is aware of the contrasts between the two women; most men are, and he knows that many, on looks alone, would go for Catherine.
But he's seen the way that Nick smiles at Sara, flirts with her, has done ever since she first came to Vegas, though he believes his friend when he asserts that it's a brother-sister thing.
He's seen how Bobby sits a little straighter in his chair when Sara's in the ballistics lab, how results always seem to come back a little faster when he's working a case with her.
He's seen how Archie can be professing dog-tiredness, only to miraculously recover when Sara walks in, asks what's going on.
Even Hodges, the most irritating thing to come out of LA since Joan Rivers, has been known to tone it down in her presence.
Then there's Greg, who would crawl over broken glass for her, literally, whose desire to become a CSI is only marginally eclipsed by his desire for a date with her.
And that's only the guys he's seen around her, he doesn't know how many other times it's happened but he's seen enough to know that it's Sara, not Catherine, who is the femme fatale of the CSI lab, and she doesn't even know it.
Which of course makes it all the more appealing.
On one level, Warrick is no different from any of them, in that he too knows the allure of Sara Sidle.
But he is different, because he sees the special smile that she reserves for him alone, the jokes they share that only they understand. And he is different, because when she goes home, she goes home with him, and there, she's not the femme fatale of the CSI lab, she's just Sara, his Sara, and that's all she needs to be.