Disclaimer: Don't own them, but I have some ideas for next season if TPTB are listening.
A/N:Post Grave Danger. Nick and Sara try to deal with the aftermath. Not too fluffy, I hope. I am trying to go for more angst. Let me know how I am doing!
They lay in a tangle of sheets and limbs. The room was hot and sticky, but she didn't want to move away from him. The ceiling fan turned lazily, as if the heat affected it as well. He was fiery hot, like a human generator. It always surprised her how hot he got when he slept. Now that it was a more frequent occurrence for them to be sleeping together, she found herself drawn to his side, claiming the heat he put off. But sometime during the morning, the air conditioning had gone on the fritz, and now the room was stifling. Yet she still lay entangled in his arms.
He slept better when she was there. He had told her that much one day, as they had sat drinking vodka tonics and waiting for the charcoal to smolder in the grill. She hadn't told him that she slept better too. She hadn't admitted to herself how many days she had lain awake, trying not to remember the nightmares she had. She read, she redecorated, she worked, but she did not sleep much, until now.
After he had come out of the hospital, he had gone home to Texas for a couple of weeks. They had all wondered if he would come back. If it had been about anyone else, she was sure an office pool would have been started. But this was Nick, and everyone wanted him to come back. Everyone wanted him to be OK. When he made it back to Vegas, each one of them had taken turns going by his house and hanging out. Maybe not every day, and sometimes they did it in groups. It wasn't an organized deal; everyone needed to see him, and he needed to be seen. One morning it had just been her going by after shift. She had the next night off, so she was in no hurry to leave once she got there.
Nick had invited her in, and she could recognize the signs of no sleep. The ant bites were gone, and from the outside he looked like the same guy, but the optimism, the openness that he normally exuded was absent. She recognized that too. She had been way down before, and it had taken a while to climb back up. She had opened a couple of beers and they had sat out on Nick's small deck, taking in the morning sun. It was a comfortable silence, but she wasn't used to him being so silent.
"I know you know about the drinking and driving that I almost got busted for," she said, calmly. It was a fact. She had dealt with it. The drinking hadn't been the problem. It was the symptom. Nick looked over at her in surprise. He had heard some things, but he had never asked. He figured she would tell him if she wanted.
"I had heard some bullshit when you went on that extended vacation," he said, and tried not to look at the beer she was holding.
"It's not booze I have a problem with. It's unresolved feelings. And I lead myself into a lot of unresolved situations," she said. "But I'm learning how to deal with that. I guess what I am trying to say is that this is a deep canyon, but if you look up, you can still see the sky." She snorted derisively. "Listen to me, talking in platitudes. I was hoping to help you, but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right."
"I'm glad you are trying," Nick said with a wan smile and reached over and squeezed her hand. To her surprise, he didn't let go. "I'm glad you've made it through the canyon. I just can't help feeling like I'm wimping out. You had a tough experience, out there at the mental hospital, but I didn't see you taking a shit-load of your built up vacation off." He let go of her hand and brought his own hand up to his head. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.
"Yeah, well, I wasn't holed up it a Plexiglas coffin covered in ants for more than 12 hours," she said sarcastically, before she thought. It had sounded callous and flippant as she said it, and she had opened her mouth to say she was sorry when she heard an odd sound. Nick was laughing.
"When you put it that way . . . " he said, and continued chuckling. It wasn't a hearty guffaw, but it gave Sara hope.
"If it had been Warrick in that coffin, would you expect him to be back at work yet?" she asked pointedly. Nick looked into her eyes fiercely.
"It wasn't Warrick," he said, a little hoarsely.
"No, Nick, it wasn't Warrick. For some suck-ass reason, it was you." Sara thought about what she had just said. Maybe the beer and no sleep were getting to her. "That didn't come out right. I'm glad it wasn't Warrick. No, well, I'm not glad it was you . . . " she said, fumbling over her words. She couldn't seem to say anything right. But now Nick was laughing, and that was music to her tired ears.
"Sara, who would you have liked it to have been?" Nick asked. He was still smiling.
"Nobody. Not even Sofia or Ecklie," she said quietly. Nick nodded, his smile gone. "Nick, you've gone through so much, and you've always come through it with flying colors. I have always wished I could have a little of your evergreen optimism, and I hate to think that this is going to diminish it."
"There's just been so much. Stalkers, perps with guns drawn on me, and Kristy," he said. "And that's just been this job, the last five years. Not to mention all the cases with kids." The laughter was gone again. "I don't know if I can go back to it. I don't see how Greg went back after the explosion."
"Me neither," said Sara, and she drained the last of her beer.
"But I don't fit in back home anymore. I found out when I went those two weeks. It was great, but it just wasn't right," he said, sighing heavily.
"You can never go home again," she said.
"Spoken by a woman who knows, huh? So what's your deal Sara? You never talk about home," he said. Her face was stoic, but he could see the conflicting emotions in her eyes.
"That's because I don't have one," she said, standing and grabbing his empty beer bottle. "You want another?"
"I'll get it. Let's go in, anyway. It's starting to get hot." Nick wondered at the absence of emotion on her face. For a moment at least, he wasn't thinking about ants, dirt and enclosed spaces. He was thinking of Sara.
So they had passed the morning with several beers, and Sara had told him bits and pieces about her childhood. It sounded idyllic. Bed and breakfast in Tamales Bay with hippie parents who let you run pretty freely. But he could tell she was holding back.
"What happened?" he asked. Sara didn't want to tell him, but there was something in his manner that reminded her of the Nick before the burial. She could see why he always got interviewees to talk when he questioned them. So she told him.
"My mother stabbed my father. To death. I went to foster care for my high school career, and she went to prison. There were a lot of nights I lay awake listening to them fighting, but I'll never forget that one." There were none of the tears that had come when she told Grissom. She said it as dispassionately as possible, but her eyes trembled with emotion.
"My God. Sara, I don't know what to say." He wanted to hug her, or something, but she looked as if she would break if moved. He wondered if that is how he had looked when he first came out of the hospital, like a fragile shell. He wondered if that was how he had looked after the baby sitter had left that night in his childhood. He knew that he had wanted nothing more than to be held and told that everything was going to be all right. Of course, he couldn't make that promise to Sara, but he could hold her.
She was sitting on the opposite end of the couch from him, her left arm leaning on the armrest, her right hand languidly holding her empty bottle. She was looking straight ahead, trying not to cry, he thought. He slid over next to her and took the bottle from her hand, set it on the floor, and pulled her into a tight hug. She was stiff at first, but then he felt her arms tight around him as well. They sat like that for a little while, Nick rocking her ever so slightly and patting her back as she shed silent tears. She pulled away and hid her face from him, hastily wiping the tears with her fingers.
"Wow. I am so bad at this. I'm supposed to be helping you out, not showing what a crybaby I am," she said. He touched her gently on the chin and pulled her face around to him. He wiped the trails of her tears with his thumbs. He continued to hold her cheek with his right hand while he rubbed her shoulder with his left.
"You have got to be the strongest person I know," he said. "And you are helping, just by being here, and by sharing yourself with me. I'm lucky to have a friend like you." He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, hugging her to him again. Sara hadn't felt quite so vulnerable in quite a while, even at the mental institution when the pottery shard had been held to her throat. At the same time, Nick's presence was reassuring. How could he be so caring of others when he had just come through so much?
Nick felt good to be holding onto Sara. It felt good to feel something other than scared, depressed, and confused. This was what he did. He always rescued the damsel in distress. It was the only way he could rescue himself. He pulled back from her slightly, intending to say something. But instead he had kissed her, and the kiss had turned desperate and greedy. The need for her mouth on his was akin to his need to be out of the coffin that terrible night. Vague warnings signaled in the back of his mind, but the release of feeling something, anything was too strong for him to overcome.
She was surprised when Nick kissed her. When his kiss had grown so insistent, she had been a little scared. Her body had betrayed her mind. Human contact is a basic need, as fundamental as food and water. She tended to sell herself short of all three. Though her mind was alerting her to all the reasons why this was not a good idea, she found herself returning his kiss, with vigor. Her need was as desperate and greedy as his. Why did she let herself go without much in the way of touch?
And so they had found themselves clinging together in a tangle of clothing and limbs on his living room rug. They lay in stunned silence, reason returning as the fog of hormones and emotion receded. She was scared to say anything or to even open her eyes back up as she felt his weight shift off of her to the floor beside her. The fear of what could come next cut deeply through the post-orgasmic languor that wanted to take hold of her.
"I know this is a little late to be asking, but are you on any kind of birth control?" he asked softly. She finally opened her eyes and turned her head to him. He was as close to the old Nick as she had seen him. He even had a bit of a smirk on his face.
"Actually, I am, now that you ask. Any diseases I should know of?" she replied, her lips twisting to keep from smiling. He shook his head to say no and they both started laughing nervously. He ran his hand over her exposed abdomen. She started to push it away, but the flutters it created all over her body were too delicious.
"Would you like to take a shower? Maybe retire to my bedroom?" he asked, kissing her neck.
"Nick, I don't know . . . " she started to say. He put his hand on her cheek.
"We can overanalyze and worry tomorrow," he said. "Today, let's just be." He said it as a statement, but his warm brown eyes were questioning her. If she had ever trusted anyone, it was Nick. And if anyone needed a night to "just be," they did. She only nodded her assent.
They had showered and gone to his bed, taking time to savor and explore. She welcomed the absence of thought and logic. She gave herself over to total feeling, to the moment. Afterwards she felt refreshed, as if she had awoken from a long sleep. Maybe her brain had needed to decompress. She fought the urge to ask him one hundred questions as to where this might take them. He was laying there, peacefully dozing. She knew he had probably not done that in a while. She pushed the analytical part of her aside, and gave herself over to sleep.