DISCLAIMER: They aren't mine. Yet. You see, I'm going to take over the world and CBS with it and then they will all be mine and... Oh yeah. That part's a secret.

But I don't own them, anyway.

He hates their nightmares, not just because they are nightmares but because of the way they invade their lives. Nick's taken to seeing their bedroom as a sanctuary, the one place in the world where the outside world shouldn't be able to penetrate, and so when their own subconscious minds betray them like that it makes him feel almost physically ill.

He's lying on his back in bed, half-asleep, and frustrated. Sara's hiding in the bathroom recovering from her latest nightmare. She'll be back once she's calmed down: he knows she never wants company when she feels like that. Maybe that's where half of his problem comes from, because anyone else in the world would probably want hugs and kisses and to be rocked back to sleep, but that isn't how Sara works and he doesn't understand it.

She'll come back with tear tracks and a bright, fake smile clashing on her face, and then she'll climb back into bed and pretend that nothing's wrong, even though she woke him by whimpering in her sleep. It does bother him that she wants to deal with her demons alone: she's seeing a counsellor, but it still feels like she's shutting him out, even if he is slightly relieved at the same time. When he's the one with the nightmares he has to talk about them, talk about every little detail until he's brought them out into the world of reality where they can't hurt him any more. Sara cries hers away in silence, in a dark corner of the bathroom.

As he lies in bed, listening, because he always promises that if he hears her really sobbing he'll go in there and hold her whether she likes it or not, he wonders what he ever expected. He has issues, Sara has issues, and they muddle through life together trying to put on a normal face to the world. They're not normal, they don't operate normally, and this isn't a normal relationship either.

He knew this without being told - it's always been an essential quality of both their lives. But maybe why it's bugging him so much right at this particular moment is that he's still hearing the words of some cops, who don't know Nick overheard them talking at a crime scene. One young cop, new to Las Vegas, new to the night shift, and an older one, whom Nick had known for a while. The two of them had been standing like sentinels outside the front door of a house Nick, Sara and Catherine had been processing. Nick had been in the living room, right beside the front door, and he'd heard their voices.

He'd heard the older man, someone he'd liked, someone he'd joked with before, telling the younger one all the bits of gossip about the three crime scene investigators. Catherine's past as a stripper was described in over the top salacious detail, and Nick had been processing the floor, trying not to hear but grateful Catherine was at the back of the house with Sara. The younger cop had pressed for more gossip so his colleague had told him the other two CSIs were sleeping together.

It would've been all right had the conversation ended there, though Nick was as embarrassed as hell, because he hadn't realised their relationship was common knowledge. The older cop had gone on, blissfully unaware of Nick, half-frozen beneath the windowsill inside the living room, unable to help hearing everything they said, each comment making him angrier and angrier and even more nauseous.

That Sara was only interested in him because she'd been rejected by Gil Grissom - that she was using Nick to make Grissom jealous.

That Nick was using his relationship with Sara to hurt Grissom because of the promotion that had never been.

That Sara was "hot", but "pretty messed up". This had been followed by the inevitable "What does he see in her?" comment from the younger cop. It seemed that the older one had only had one idea - that Sara must be good in bed.

Hearing their relationship - something that was so precious to them both - talked about like that, like some idle piece of gossip that had nothing to do with real people, made him feel worse than he could have imagined. So maybe that's why he's so upset right now about nightmares and about the fact that Sara's hiding in the bathroom.

He doesn't believe any of that is true. He'd never use Sara for anything, and certainly not to hurt Grissom. If he could have had Sara without hurting Grissom he would have done anything, but there are no miracles in Nick's world. And he knows Sara's over Grissom and has been for a long time: he did, after all, break her heart more than once. It was that last comment that had stung the most.

He sees a lot in Sara. He sees someone who is "pretty messed up", yes, but he also saw someone who was doing her best to get over all the crap in her life the only way she knew how. He saw someone who cared for others so much that it put her through even more pain; someone who was smart and passionate and as stubborn as hell. He was with her, and he loved her, for so much more than just the fact that she was "good in bed". It had been a long time before he'd even got close enough to find that out. Their relationship is based on so much more than just sex, and it seems to cheapen everything, somehow, to know that people are saying that sort of thing about them.

So, right now, Nick hates their nightmares because it's giving him ample opportunity to lie alone in silence and think. Suddenly, frustrated, he gets out of bed and crosses the hallway to the bathroom. She doesn't lock the door behind her at times like this, because he doesn't usually come, so she looks up in surprise as he pushes the door open. It's dark, but he can still see that she's huddled up on the floor in the corner.

He came here on a spur of the moment thought and now he doesn't know what to say or do, just that he wants to prove those cops wrong in his own mind. They'll never know, but Nick will take a kind of pleasure in knowing how wrong they are.

If he tells himself the truth he knows she's kind of glad she keeps her nightmares from him, because they bring back his own bad memories. It's something that's been niggling at him for a while now - that he gives her all the details of his own nightmares out of some selfish need. He doesn't know how to cope with Sara's nightmares any more than he really knows how to deal with his own. Even though they're both doing all they can they do that differently. "Want some company?" he asks.

"Sure." Sara sniffs, and shrugs, and pats the floor next to her. Nick sits down, a little awkwardly, wondering what to do next. Sara's trying not to let him see that she's wiping her eyes with her hand. "Tell me what's going on," he says, knowing it's a cop-out to try to put the ball back in her court.

"What do you mean?" Sara asks, a little unsteadily. Nick can feel the steady warm heat radiating from her body. She's got the blinds shut, and it seems incongruous to think that outside it's midday and most people are going about their daily lives.

"Why do you do this? Why do you come here?" It's suddenly urgent that he knows, that he really understands what's happening in her head, and so maybe his voice is a little harsher than he intends.

"I can't do anything else," she says, and suddenly there's an undefinible distance between them.

"I don't understand," Nick whispers. He's scared now, for whatever reason. "Why can't you?" He wants to touch her but he's too afraid she'll recoil from him, knowing he couldn't bear that, not now.

Sara chokes on a sob and hides behind her hands. He understands this, this is Sara hiding, it's what she does best. It doesn't make him feel any better about the situation because there's more going on here than just Sara being Sara, and he feels like they're on really shaky ground at the moment.

"Sara, just tell me," he pleads. "Baby, please," and he hears his own voice breaking. "I want to understand, Sara, I just want to make it better."

"I'm not a toy. You don't just fix me," she spits out, inching away from him. Any moment now she might leap up and run away.

"I'm not trying to fix you," he says, trying to be calm but feeling like he might cry himself. "Just tell me what's wrong. This is scaring me, Sara."

"I didn't mean that." They wait, long seconds, for Sara to control herself enough to go on. "I'm not like you, Nick," she manages, finally. "I can't deal with my problems like you do."

"I don't get it." He's confused, but she's talking, and he wants to keep her talking.

"You're just so rational," she says, and she's calming down now. Maybe talking is helping her as much as helping him. "You can rationally go through your nightmares and - and catalogue them, and prove to yourself that even though they're horrible at the time they aren't real and they can only get to you if you let them, and I can't do that, Nicky. I can't load you down with my nightmares when I can't even deal with them myself. I'm a scientist but I can't think straight about my own mind."

Relieved, Nick finally feels like things are making some kind of sense. He puts a hand on her shoulder as she keeps talking, saying things that she's obviously wanted to say for a while. Her skin is still slightly damp from sweat, and so is the tank top she's wearing. It can't have been more than fifteen minutes since she woke up, but it seems very much longer to Nick.

"You've got it all under control," she says, her words flowing rapidly and almost seeming to trip over each other. "And I'm just a mess. I've been in therapy for three years and look at me." She says 'therapy' like it's some kind of swear word. It's not something she often talks about to him.

"You're beautiful," Nick says, because it's the only thing he can say and because even like this, it's true.

"I wish I believed that," she says softly, and she wrinkles up her face for a second like she's trying not to cry again. "I'm a disaster."

"So tell me why that means you run away, every time you have a nightmare."

"I've been living with you for two years, Nick. This is the first time you've come to see if I'm all right."

Something cold grasps him around the heart as he racks his brain for a single occasion with which he can prove her wrong. There doesn't appear to be one. "I didn't think you wanted me," is the only sentence his mind can form.

"I did. I wanted you to prove that you cared."

Now he really does feel sick, but this is a different kind of sick. A guilty sick. He hates himself right now for all that it seems he's done to her, by getting just one idea in his head and holding to it. "I'm so sorry," he whispers. "I thought you didn't want me. I thought you were shutting me out and I'd just lie there wishing you'd let me make it all go away."

"You can't make it all go away. But I wish you'd told me this earlier," Sara says, and she sounds tired.

Nick reaches out for her and pulls her into his arms. He can feel the tension in her body, and he can feel it slowly dissipating. "I've been silly, haven't I?" she asks, her voice muffled against his chest.

"Not you. Me. I'm so sorry, babe." Nick holds her tighter, as if this way he could convince her how sincere he was.

"I know you never did it on purpose."

They sit there on the bathroom floor until they both get numb, then Sara stumbles upright and pulls him up with her. "Now that we've got that sorted out, let's go back to bed."

Nick stops her, just for a second, and kisses her. He still doesn't have the words to say how guilty or how sorry he feels, how much he wishes he could turn back the clock, how scared he is that he's screwed her up for life, how grateful he is that she's stuck by him all this time. Even if she's willing to forgive him, he's not sure when he's going to forgive himself.

They tumble back into bed, sort out the tangled sheets and spread them over themselves. "I'm sorry," says Nick, yet again, still trying to make it all better.

"It's OK."

"No, it's not."

"Don't keep talking about it, Nick," she says, and for a moment he thinks she is really angry with him - and he wants her to be, because he could maybe feel better then - but then she curls up against him and he puts his arms round her, automatically, and she sighs.

He wants to keep talking, wants to try to make understand how he feels about all this, but he knows she probably couldn't bear it. So for once he keeps it inside, and just concentrates on her body, on everything he loves about her and how grateful he is to her right now.

They drift off to sleep again, just the two of them here, alone together with the big bad world outside, unable to intrude for a few mercifully blissful hours.

THE END