Title: Alive Again
Summary: Sara and Warrick become closer after he saves her life.
A/N: Once again thanks for the reviews! This chapter was actually pretty difficult to write so I apologize for the delay. I'll try to get the next one out sooner. :)
Spoilers: Possibly anything all the way up to Early Rollout.
Rating: PG13 for language and some adult situations.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of it. If I did I wouldn't be living in this shoddy little apartment dreaming about winning the lottery. :)
Chapter Seven:
One week later...
Sara walked into the break room grinning. She couldn't help it. Every time she tried to force her normal stoic expression onto her face she failed. By all accounts she was in a good mood.
"Hey guys whats up?" she chirped.
"Uh hi Sara." Catherine said with confusion.
"Sara, Sara, Sara. You are looking fine today if I may say so myself," Greg commented with a syrupy voice.
Sara flashed him a toothy grin. "You can say so as much as you like Greg, but you still can't touch me."
"Sara you truly wound me," Greg whispered melodramatically to her.
"Greg I am going to wound you if you don't shut your trap and sit down," Grissom said without rancor.
Sara winked at Greg before sitting down next to Nick. Her mood just kept getting better and better.
Grissom looked down at his notes. "Where is Warrick?"
"He is on vacation starting tonight remember?" Catherine chimed in.
"Yes thats right. Ok people its a relatively slow night. Catherine how is that nightclub shooting you and Warrick are working on coming along?"
She shrugged lightly before answering. "Not bad. We have a few leads. Its going to be harder without Warrick. I was going to go interview some possible suspects tonight."
Grissom nodded. "Ok and take Greg with you. He might learn something and maybe he can help out."
Greg nearly bounded out of his chair with excitement until he caught Grissom's glare and settled back down.
Grissom looked over at Nick. "Are you up for working solo tonight?"
Nick true to his nature grinned widely. "Always."
"You have a DB at the Tangiers. Looks like suicide." Grissom handed him the file and Nick grabbed it without hesitation.
"Sara you are staying in the lab tonight. If anything comes up I'll send you out. I'll be in my office with paperwork." With that Grissom turned around quickly and left.
The other CSIs flashed Sara some sympathetic looks and she smiled in return. She knew she should be used to this type of treatment by now, but for some reason it still irked her. She vowed to herself that she would not let him destroy her good mood however. That thought was almost ruined when she realized that he hadn't qualified which lab work she was supposed to work on. 'Guess I'll have to go ask him myself.'
Standing outside of his closed office door she forced on a calm front and knocked lightly. When he called for her to open the door she did so and smiled while asking him what he wanted her to do exactly.
Grissom seemed surprised for a moment and appeared to think about the question. "Why don't you pull one of these cold cases down and work on that?"
"A cold case? Your kidding with me right?" she exclaimed.
Grissom stared at her for a moment. "No Sara I am not 'kidding'.
"Grissom is this punishment for something I did? There are three DBs on Catherine's case and you assigned another DB to Nick tonight. You sent Greg to work with Catherine and you are keeping me here in the lab to work on cold cases?" With each sentence she spoke her voice got progressively louder until she was almost shouting. So much for the good mood.
"Sara," he snapped, "In case you have forgotten I am the supervisor of this shift. And while you may not respect me personally you will respect the position."
Sara answered by glaring defiantly at him.
"Do I need to pick a case for you? Get you started?"
"No." Her voice dripped acid as she walked over to the fish and grabbed the first case she saw that looked mildly interesting. Without looking at him she turned to leave his office. She had just opened the door when he spoke again.
"Sara stop," he muttered.
"What do you need?" she asked impolitely.
"Shut the door and sit down. Now," he added when she hesitated.
Sara took a deep breath and slowly shut the door. She had already come close to completely exploding during this encounter and wanted to get her temper under control. Exhaling lightly she sat down in the chair across from his desk and stared at him expectantly.
"Sara I wasn't keeping you in the lab tonight to punish you. I needed to keep someone behind in case anything came up."
Sara raised an eyebrow. "So I couldn't have gone on that case with Nick and left if something came up?"
He sighed. "Sara the decisions I make concerning the employees in this lab are not meant to be taken as personal affronts.
Sara shook her head from side to side incredulously. "Grissom you do realize that in the past month you have gone out of your way to do this to me several times? And tonight you sent Greg out over me. To be honest with you I am expecting a demotion to hit me at anytime. Or maybe a transfer to Ecklie's shift."
"Sara like I said, this is not personal."
"What is it then? Am I being punished because of something I did professionally?"
"Sara you are not being punished. I keep trying to tell you that."
Sara felt like she was talking to a brick wall. "Ok Grissom you win. Are we done here?"
"Yes." He paused for a moment before speaking again. "Sara we used to be on talking terms."
She chuckled sarcastically as she walked out the door. "No Grissom we used to be friends," she said loudly enough for him to hear. As she walked down the hall to a deserted work area she couldn't even remember having been in a good mood earlier that evening.
*****
Sara sat quietly contemplating the case in front of her. It was two years old and Warrick had been the lead. Thinking about Warrick made her smile and forget the case for a moment.
She never would have known how great he could be if they hadn't gotten into that argument a week ago in the locker room. After shift he insisted on coming home with her. She let her mind drift back to that day.
"You can cook?"
He smiled. "Of course I can cook. My grandmother taught me how. Of course I rarely cook for vegetarians. You are a difficult woman to please Sara," he said with a friendly wink as he worked on making them a few omelets.
She watched him with admiration. "You know I am a decent cook too. I was raised in a B&B you know. I had to help out all the time."
"The closest thing this city has to a Bed and Breakfast is one of the hotels on the strip," he laughed.
"We come from really different backgrounds."
"Yeah we do but we aren't all that different," he spoke smiling at her. "Ah here we are! Two omelets. One veggie and one tasty!"
She looked at his meat filled omelet and mock gagged. "It was sweet of you to make me the veggie one."
"Well I want you to eat. I don't think I would have gotten much down you if I had made two meat lovers omelets."
She chuckled. "Nope you wouldn't have."
Later they sat on her couch watching a movie he had brought with him, 'The Shawshank Redemption' . Afterwards knowing that they would each be tired soon and he would leave Sara turned to talk with him.
"Warrick I am not an alcoholic," she said seriously.
Warrick reached his hand up to rub over his face as if by doing so he would be able to avoid this conversation.. "Sara I never said that you were."
"You said I had a problem."
"You do. I didn't say that it was alcoholism."
"Then what?" she asked a little more hotly than she intended.
"Sara I don't want to get into a fight with you."
"Warrick stop avoiding the question. What is it with you men?"
"Whoa. Stop right there. 'Us men'? Sara I don't even need to ask who you are talking about. I. Am. Not. Him. You want to know what your problem is? You take everything too hard. You've spent your whole life being the best at everything that you don't know how to handle losing. And when you do lose you pretend like nothing happened. You bottle it up inside and continue living your life until something else happens and you lose again. Eventually you've lost so much that a friend comes over to your place one day and sees you open the door drunk and looking like total shit."
Sara shook her head trying to deny what he was saying. "Warrick I would never compare you to Hank."
"Sara I'm not talking about Hank. I'm talking about Grissom."
Her head shot up and she looked shocked.
"Yeah I know about you two. Well a little bit at least. If he is the guy you want I won't stand in your way. But I'm not going anywhere either. Like I said before, you need a friend. I know what its like to fall so low your not sure you can get back up. I wasn't alone then and I sure as hell am not going to leave you alone."
Sara gazed at him with tears in her eyes. She wanted to say that she didn't need him or anyone else but it wasn't the truth. When he opened his arms she flung herself against his chest and let him hold her tight while she cried unspent tears. "Warrick I've been so hard on you before," she said after a few minutes.
"Sara you have got to stop apologizing for things that happened in the past. Yeah our first year working together might have been a bit rough but I always figured it was because you were hot for me," he quipped to ease the tension.
She pulled back quickly and saw the laughter in his eyes. Without thinking she leaned forward to kiss him, but he stopped her. She looked at him with confusion.
"Sara you need to mean it."
She once again questioned him with her eyes.
"I won't lie to you Sara. I am attracted to you. But you need to know for sure that I am the guy you want. Lets not play games with each other. I've had enough of that in my life and from what I've heard you have too."
Sara nodded slowly before pulling away from him. She continued to hold his hand however while sitting closely to him on the couch.
"Will you have dinner with me tonight," she asked.
"Yes," he grinned at her.
Sara was broken out of her reverie by footsteps falling behind her. She turned around and was relieved to see that they belonged to Nick.
"Sara want to have lunch with me?"
"Sure Nick. You mind if we go out? I don't really want to be here right now."
He frowned and nodded. "Come on lets go. I'm driving."
She giggled and agreed.
Once they reached the restaurant Nick pressed her to tell him what was wrong.
"Nicky when you left I was in a great mood. The other CSIs left with you. Who do you think is responsible for my mood?"
He groaned. "Grissom."
"Yep," she chirped. "Look though lets drop it. He and I haven't gotten along very well in quite awhile. I refuse to let it ruin every day of my life."
Nick sat back in his chair. "Well then..."
She looked at him suspiciously. "When then what?"
"You and Warrick?"
"You know you pop into this line of questioning way too much!" she snarled.
Nick decided to not back down this time. "Hey I am just practicing my superior investigating techniques. So lets put two and two together. You came into shift tonight grinning from ear to ear. Warrick requested the week off. If I was to make a deduction right now I would say that you wore him out," he quipped.
"Nicky!"
"Hey don't act so shocked. Everybody knows you two have been hanging out. Catherine was telling me how he stares at you when he doesn't think anyone is looking. Personally I like the idea of you two hooking up. You are actually smiling some these days."
Sara groaned before settling her head in hands. "Does everyone at the lab think we are sleeping together?"
"Well I don't think Ecklie's crew knows about it yet."
Sara's face twisted into an expression of disgust. "People spend way too much time gossiping. Nick I promise you that Warrick and I are just friends. Can we drop this please?"
Nick chuckled and was happy that he finally was able to throw Sara off base. He already knew that nothing had happened between her and Warrick but very much enjoyed making her squirm. By the time their lunches arrived they moved on to the much more comfortable topic of dead bodies and unsolved crimes.
*****
Sara spent the rest of her shift isolating herself from the rest of the team. She wasn't any closer to solving the cold case she had picked earlier but refused to give up. It had been a case that Catherine and Warrick worked on. An older couple who owned a small corner grocery store had been shot and killed late one evening. No money had been removed from the register or the small safe on the premises. Nothing appeared to have been stolen from them. There were no witnesses. Nor did the couple have any family or friends who could provide motive.
Catherine and Warrick had covered all of their bases but had nothing to go on. The case was thrown on the fish until she had picked it up earlier in the evening.
When she looked at her watch she saw that shift had ended thirty minutes ago and decided to call it a day. No point in wasting more time on a case that had no leads. She gathered up all of her files and proceeded to return them to Grissom's office. She was relieved to see that he wasn't there.
On the way to the break room her cell phone rang.
"Sidle."
"Guess who?"
"Heya Warrick," she said.
"Are you coming over?"
"You are on vacation silly. You are supposed to be enjoying yourself."
"When you are around I do enjoy myself. So are you coming over?"
"Well I am feeling a bit scuzzy. I need to take a shower."
He laughed. "Take a shower here. I've got clean towels and I know you have a change of clothes in your car. I won't take no for answer. You might as well submit now."
"Okay okay! You got me. I'll be there in about thirty minutes."
"See you soon."
"Yep." Sara put her cell phone away as she walked into the break room. Then she stopped. Sitting on the table was a cute little cactus and a card with her name on it. With some trepidation she opened the card to see yet another simple message from the one man who had the ability to drive her crazy like no other.
'Sorry. Friends? From Grissom' the card read.
