Chapter 5 – Moving In

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Sara sat at the break room table, filling out the form she had just picked up from Human Resources. Or was it called Employee Affairs now? Office of Employee Relations? They were always changing it.

"You moving?" Catherine asked when she saw what Sara was filling out.

"Yep."

"Why? Where to?" Catherine asked.

"Uh…" Sara glanced over at the coffee machine, where Nick was pouring two cups of coffee.

"Oh," Catherine realized. "Wow, things are going good I guess."

"Great," Sara smiled as she watched Nick approaching.

"You two talking about me?" he smiled as he handed Sara a cup of coffee.

"Wouldn't you like to know," Sara quipped. It didn't take long for her to realize that she was sure she wanted to move in with Nick. Of course there were the practical and economical reasons; like Nick said, she did spend most of her time at his place anyway. But the more important reason was simply that she wanted to be with him. She had never officially moved in with a guy before, but then again no other guy had made her feel the way she felt about Nick, so she knew moving in with him was the right thing to do.

"You bailing on us?" Warrick walked in and saw Sara's change of address form.

"Of course not," Sara replied.

"Get kicked out of your apartment? Neighbors complaining about excessive 'noise'?" Warrick looked at Nick.

Nick glared at him. "You know you're helping us move," he told Warrick.

"Yeah, we'll see about that," Warrick said.

"Hey Greg, are you busy next Saturday?" Sara asked as Greg walked in.

"Never busy enough to make time for you," he smiled, getting a look from Nick. "Uh, what's on Saturday?"

"I need help moving."

"You're moving?" Greg's face registered slight panic.

"In with Nick," she explained.

"Oh." Her explanation didn't really make him feel any better. While Nick was his friend and he was glad that Sara was happy, his crush on her would never completely go away. "Sure, I'll help."

"Thanks Greg," Sara smiled.

"See, now you don't need my help," Warrick said.

"Believe me, we will," Nick replied. "Do you know how much crap she has crammed into that tiny apartment?"

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Nick was right. She had way too much crap in her apartment. She blamed it on genetics. While she and her parents seemed like complete opposites in nearly every other aspect of their lives, she knew she inherited her packrat tendencies from them. She sighed at the site of the many boxes that filled her now bare bedroom, filled with forensic journals and old textbooks, even old term papers and reports from her college and graduate studies.

Sara removed the remaining clothes hanging in her closet and haphazardly shoved them in a box, still on their hangers. She hated packing. She knew she probably could have cut down the number of boxes she had used if she was a little more organized. But she didn't really care. Why was that? At work she was so meticulous and methodical, always having a perfect systematic approach to everything. But when it came to her personal life, she was the complete opposite. Her apartment was crowded and disorganized, and she could never manage to keep it clean, which was doubly strange since she barely spent enough time in it to get it dirty. She knew the hardest part about the move would be trying to adjust to living with neat freak Nick.

The doorbell interrupted Sara's thoughts. "Nick, can you get that?" she yelled out, knowing he was somewhere in the apartment.

"Hey guys, thanks for coming," Nick greeted as he let Warrick and Greg in.

"Damn, how much stuff does she have?" Warrick immediately noticed the living room was filled with boxes.

"Well there wouldn't be so many boxes if someone learned how to pack," Nick said as he saw Sara walk into the living room.

"Why would I waste my time trying to pack everything so perfectly when I'm just going to have to unpack it all again?" Sara reasoned. She dropped a box on the floor and headed back to the bedroom.

Nick rolled his eyes. "And this isn't even all of it. There's more back in the bedrooms."

"Well I guess we better get started then," Greg said as he picked up a box and headed out to the trucks.

"What are you doing with all her furniture?" Warrick asked Nick as he picked up a box.

"I don't know, probably sell most of it. Her lease doesn't end for a couple weeks so we have some time before we have to get it out of here. Do you need a couch?" Nick gestured toward Sara's vibrantly colored couch.

"As much as I do love the color red, a red couch isn't really my style. Besides, the walls in my living room are green. Not exactly a good combination. Unless I want it to feel like Christmas everyday," Warrick said as he carried the box out the front door.

"Who buys a red couch anyway?" Nick asked himself as he grabbed a box and followed Warrick out.

Between the four of them, they managed to move all of Sara's boxes in one trip.

"Are you gonna have room for all this stuff?" Warrick asked Nick as they carried boxes into Nick's house.

"Doubtful," Nick replied, letting out a grunt as he placed the boxes on the living room floor. "I might have to secretly dump a couple boxes of those old journals. Like she's ever gonna read those again anyway."

"I heard that," Sara said as she walked through the door, boxes in arms.

"Well it's true."

Sara glared at him and continued on her way to the bedroom. Warrick gave Nick a look, who merely shrugged and headed out for more boxes.

"You need a hand with that, G?" Nick asked as Greg was coming up the walkway, having obvious difficulty balancing the three boxes he was carrying.

"No, I got it, thanks." He carefully made his way up the steps and barely made it through the front door when he tripped and sent the boxes tumbling to the floor. The box on the top of his stack had opened and some of its contents had spilled out.

Greg's eyes went wide when he saw the items on the floor. He looked up at Warrick, who was trying hard not to laugh.

"Dude, you better put those back in the box before Sara sees," Warrick advised.

Greg didn't know exactly what they were; they were kind of crumpled up. But he could tell they were silky and definitely very lacy. He scrambled to his feet and hurriedly threw the silky garments back in the box. He'd had many fantasies about Sara and her undergarments, but now was not the time to be thinking about them with Sara in the next room and Nick outside.

"What are you doing Greg?" Sara raised an eyebrow at him as she emerged from the bedroom and saw him holding her lingerie.

"Uh…I uh…I tripped and um…" he stammered. "It was Warrick's fault," he blurted.

"Hey!" Warrick protested.

"Greg, would you mind not putting the boxes right in front of the doorway?" Nick said as he stood just outside the door. "Well what do we have here?" he smiled playfully when he noticed the gathering and the garments in Greg's hand.

"I was just telling Greg that maybe I'd do some modeling for him later, as a thank you for helping me move. A little private show," she winked at Greg as she snatched the lingerie from his hand and took it along with the box back to the bedroom.

"Am I invited too?" Warrick called out as Sara disappeared into the room.

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After a few hours of relaxing with pizza and beer, the guys left for work. Sara was glad to have the night off so she could unpack and get settled in. She enjoyed the night silence as she worked. It was almost too quiet; she was used to noisy upstairs neighbors stomping around, music blaring from next door, screaming kids running down the hallway outside her front door. She knew she was going to love living in a house.

She worked until almost one in the morning, unpacking what she could. She'd have to wait until Nick got home to figure out what to do with her books and journals that didn't fit on Nick's bookshelves. She plopped herself on the couch and turned on the TV, deciding she'd relax for a while. The next thing she knew she was being awakened by the sound of jingling keys and the closing of the front door. She propped herself up on her elbows and peered over the back of the couch towards the front door, trying to adjust her eyes to the sunlight filtering in through the blinds.

"Sorry, I didn't know you were sleeping. On the couch. Again," Nick smiled as he came over and planted a kiss on the top of her head.

"I wasn't sleeping," Sara protested as she sat up.

Nick just rolled his eyes as he sat down next to her. "You hungry?"

She shook her head. "Just tired," she yawned.

"Because you weren't sleeping just now?" Nick teased.

"Right," she smiled.

"Well do you wanna try sleeping in a bed this time? Our bed?" Nick rose from the couch and offered her his hand.

"I'd love to." She took his hand and followed him to the bedroom.

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Having already slept during the night, Sara didn't sleep very much longer. She awoke at noon and quietly slipped out of bed, letting Nick sleep. Her grumbling stomach drew her to the kitchen. She opened the fridge but found that, as usual, it was practically empty. She checked the cupboards but found nothing she could eat; she wasn't that starving that she'd resort to eating beef jerky or a can of chili. Did he ever go shopping by himself or did he just wait for her to do it? She always seemed to be the one restocking his kitchen.

After a quick shower she headed for the market. An hour later she returned to a silent house, Nick still sound asleep. A giant bowl of cereal and a tall glass of extra pulpy orange juice finally quieted her stomach. She was well rested and in a great mood, and now that she was fed she decided she'd attempt to cook something for Nick before he woke up.

Meat was out of the question; while she didn't mind if Nick ate it in front of her, there was no way she was going to look at raw meat, let alone actually touch it and have to slice it up and cook it. She decided on pasta, because it was Nick's favorite non-meat food and it was one of the things she was pretty sure she couldn't screw up.

It wasn't that she was a bad cook or an inexperienced one, just an out of practice one. Most of the time she was just too busy to cook, but it didn't mean that she didn't know how. Growing up around a bed and breakfast had given her plenty of opportunities to learn, and her parents made sure they used every one of them to teach their daughter to cook. So she learned, and realized she would never be a gourmet chef, but she knew enough to get by.

She started a pot of water to boil the pasta (rotini, her favorite, because it was the funnest shape to eat) and quickly became absorbed in her cooking, humming to herself as she chopped, stirred, sautéed and simmered, her spirits dampened only temporarily when the onions stung her eyes. Just as she was finishing up she heard the shower running, and a few minutes later a showered and shaved Nick came wandering into the kitchen. When he saw what she was doing he just stared at her.

"What?" she continued stirring, not looking up but knowing he was staring.

"You're cooking."

"Yeah?"

"Since when do you cook?"

"Since always," she smirked.

Nick raised an eyebrow. Whenever they ate in together, Nick was always the one to don the chef's hat. Sara was lucky that Nick's parents forced all seven of their children to learn how to cook, because without him she'd still be living off of pizza and takeout.

"What? I cook. Sometimes. When I have time. Which unfortunately I just don't have a lot of. So my culinary skills never get to shine."

Nick continued to stare at her, still somewhat shocked.

"Hey, it's impossible not to learn when your parents own a B and B."

"It smells good," Nick said as he wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing her neck before resting his chin on her shoulder.

"Thank you," she smiled. "Go sit. It's almost done."

"Yes ma'am," Nick replied with a playful salute as he sat down at the kitchen table and flipped through the newspaper.

Sara set a plateful of pasta in front of Nick and stood, waiting for him to taste it.

"Should I be scared?" he stared at the steaming plate of pasta before him. "Oww," he whined when Sara knocked him in the back of the head. He picked up his fork and stabbed at his food, blowing on the speared pasta and vegetables to cool them down before putting them in his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds.

"Well?" Sara was getting impatient.

"Wow. This is really good," Nick said as he took another bite.

"Really?" Sara was actually a little surprised.

"Yeah," Nick replied, his mouth full. He held up a forkful of pasta for Sara and she ate it.

"Wow, this is good," she said as she chewed. "Go me," she complimented herself.

"Thank you," Nick got up from his chair and gave Sara a kiss.

"You're welcome," she smiled. She turned and headed for the living room.

"Aren't you gonna eat?" he asked with his head stuck in the fridge, searching for something to drink.

"Later," she replied. She went back to her boxes, idly picking through them.

Nick sat back down with his glass of water and continued eating, still amazed at how good the pasta was.

"Where should I put this?" Sara asked from the living room.

Nick looked up. "Uh, back in the box," he answered when he saw what she was holding up.

"What? Why?"

"This is a home, Sara. That," he pointed with his fork to the thing in her hands, "is work. They're supposed to be two separate things."

"But you don't have a scanner here."

"And I'd like to keep it that way." Nick loved his job, but he had his limits. He was a firm believer of not bringing work home, which meant no police scanners in his house. He didn't even have one back in Dallas when he was actually a cop.

"Why? How are you supposed to know what's going on? What if something big goes down while we're at home?"

"Then they'll call us. That's what phones are for."

She cocked her head and stared at him, standing her ground.

"Sara."

She remained silent, her glare fixed.

He stood up with a sigh and walked out to the living room. "Please, Sara?" he stuck his hand out to ask for the scanner.

"What's wrong with having one here? It's doesn't hurt any." Her voice was firm.

"Yes it does," Nick remained calm. "A home is a place you go to get away from work, to relax and escape all that stress and chaos. You have to keep the two separate. Especially in this job. I know you know that."

Sara let out an exasperated sigh. She'd heard this speech a million times in a million different ways, from not only Nick but from Grissom as well, and even a few times from Catherine and Warrick.

"Besides," he continued as he stepped closer, wrapping one arm around Sara's waist and taking the scanner from her with the other, "I can think of plenty of other things I'd rather be doing with you at home than listening to the scanner," he teased with a smile.

"Fine," Sara finally gave in as her lips cracked into a small smile.

"And if we miss some giant case, then you can place all the blame on me."

"Don't think I won't," she feigned anger.