Disclaimer: I don't own them.
A/N: I lied - there will be one more chapter after this. Thanks for everyone who has stuck with me as I try my hand at angst. Thanks for all the kind reviews.
Sara woke to the strident sounds of Nick's alarm clock. She was warm in his embrace. She felt a chill when he rolled over and hit the snooze button. He returned to his spoon position behind her and wrapped an arm back across her waist.
"You getting up?' he asked drowsily.
"Maybe," she said. She couldn't believe how well she had slept through the day, considering. Nightmares had come for both of them. Nick's had come in great panicking gasps, sitting him straight up in the bed. He had lain awake for a little while, listening to Sara's breathing as she stroked him. Finally, he was able to go back to sleep.
Sara's nightmare was stealthy. It had started pleasantly enough as a picnic in an area that reminded her of Tamales Bay. She could see Nick in the distance, walking toward her. When she had looked down at the food, it was rotten and infested with maggots. Looking back up, a storm raged across the bay, and her only companions were the dead girl from her case, and Gil Grissom. Gil's face was ashen and a huge bloody stain was seeping across his shirt. Sara held a knife in her hand. She recognized the knife as being one from the set her mother had in the kitchen of the bed and breakfast from her childhood.
She had willed herself awake and lay still, curled slightly into herself, intentionally taking deep breaths. She rolled over and found herself seeking Nick's warmth. The feel of another heartbeat under her hands did more to calm her than a hundred breathing exercises. Her counselor had it all wrong.
Now she was lying with Nick, listening to the sound of his alarm clock again. She pulled herself away from him and made her way to his bathroom. She heard him silence the clock and get out of the bed. She was glad she had a change of underwear and a different shirt in her bag. Greg would definitely notice the same shirt for two days. She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked more rested, fresher than she had in weeks, maybe months. So why wasn't she elated in the fact? She showered under water as hot as she could stand, hoping to scrub away the feeling that she was using Nick, or allowing herself to be used. If they were using each other, what was the problem? But she didn't want to rationalize it away. All she knew was that she had awakened a desire to touch and be touched that she had forced into hiding for a long time.
She got out of the shower and dressed, walking down the hall and into Nick's kitchen. A familiar smell tempted her.
"Is that Greg's Blue Hawaiian?" she asked. Nick handed her a large travel mug of coffee.
"He gave me a bag as a coming home present," Nick said. "I never brew coffee when it's just for me. I can't drink all of it."
"Oh man. Greg sure does know his coffee," Sara murmured, taking a sip of the pungent brew. Nick handed her a small brown bag.
"I packed you a couple of snacks," he said. Sara thought he might be blushing a bit. "It's just an apple, an orange and a PB&J, but I thought you might want something as you drove into work."
"Thank you," Sara said, unsure of what to say next. "Nick, about..." she started.
"We'll work it all out later," he said. The way he said it let Sara know that he was as confused about what to do next as she was. She was glad that he didn't have it figured out, but a small part of her wanted to be told in which direction to go. She felt that logically, they should quit before it got out of hand. But even now, as he stood before her, bare-chested in his boxer shorts and no shoes, she felt a tremulous wave of desire.
"Maybe we could meet at the diner after shift," she suggested in a light voice. It was a voice that was incredibly fake to her own ears. She tried to look as nonchalant as possible.
"Uh, I've got a meeting with Ecklie at 8:30 in the morning. You know, about coming back," he said. She thought he sounded just the slightest bit relieved. Then again, she might have been projecting her feelings onto him.
"That's great," she said, and she did mean that sincerely. She smiled at him.
"Yeah, we'll see," Nick said, but he was smiling in return. For a minute, the awkwardness was gone.
"So, maybe I'll see you at the lab in the morning," she said as she walked to the door. Nick trailed behind her. "I'm sure Greg and Griss, even Hodges would love to see you."
"Yeah, maybe. Good luck with your case," he said. Sara was reminded of the nightmare, and the way Nick's warm body anchored her in the night. She could feel her face flushing.
"Thanks," she said and hopped into her Denali. She didn't look back to see Nick watching her drive away. He closed the door and went back inside.
"We have messed this up so badly," he said to himself. The walls wouldn't disagree.
Nick's meeting with Ecklie went well. Though Conrad had been a poor motivator of his workers, he was well advised in the ways of bureaucracy. He guided Nick ably through the motions of getting back to work. Nick was relieved that his days of sick leave were coming to an end.
"We'll probably ease you back into it Nick," Ecklie had said. Nick had given him a disappointed look. "It's not that we don't think you are capable," Ecklie said. "We want to make damn sure that we don't make some of the same mistakes we have made with people in the past. I am trying to do a better job of managing some of these issues. We don't want to lose good CSI's like you to burn out.
Nick wondered if Ecklie was talking about Sara. He hadn't seen her when he came into the office. Now, as he wandered toward Grissom's office, he thought she might have bailed out to avoid him. He couldn't say that he blamed her. Again he thought about how badly they had screwed their friendship up. He wondered if a few nights of easier sleeping was worth a good friend. At least Grissomhad been pleased to see him.
"You just missed Sara," he said. "I don't know how you didn't seeher in the hall." Nick was pretty sure he knew. She had seen him coming and gone the other way. A pang of loss fired through him. He pushed it away and smiled at his former supervisor.
It went that way for a week. He called her cell, but never left a message. He thought once she had rode by his house. He counted the minutes until he was able to come back to work. His nightmares returned with a vengeance, and even the thoughts of an aggressive Sara in his bed did nothing to abate them. He thought about getting a dog, just to hear the sound of some other living thing in his house. Hell, he might even let it sleep in the bed with him.
His first night of work finally came. He was eager to get back into the game. Catherine and Warrick greeted him with hugs and doughnuts in the break room. They gave him cold case files to read over. He logged evidence and hounded the techs for lab results. He did go out with Cath on a routine B&E. He felt weird to be back in the field. Every dark corner spooked him, though he did not show it. He didn't want anyone to doubt his ability, especially himself. At the end of the evening, he felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
"Hey, I made it through the shift without being kidnapped, and I didn't run screaming from evidence bags or piles of dirt," he told Catherine. "I feel like I'm making progress," he said, and they had laughed. Catherine didn't know just how serious he was under the banter and wide smile.
"Just for that, Warrick and I are taking you out to breakfast," she said.
"Greg and Sara just pulled a triple. I am going to see if they want to go as well," said Warrick. Nick was surprised that Catherine didn't balk, but she just smiled. Things had changed in his absence. At least this change was good.
Nick's stomach gave a small lurch at the sight of Sara ambling at Greg's side. She looked tired, and Nick thought he saw the smallest hint of tears in her brown eyes.
"Nicky!" Greg exclaimed and caught Nick in a bear hug. The younger man looked exhausted as well, but nothing seemed to wear out his mood.
"G! You been working out," Nick said from the crushing grip Greg had on him. "Bout time," he added as Greg stepped away grinning.
"I thought if I beefed up a little, Sara might finally see the error of her ways and fall for me," Greg said. Sara rolled her eyes and him and smiled a tired smile.
"Nick," she said quietly, and stepped forward to hug him. He felt like everyone's eyes were on them. "It's good to see you back at the lab," she said into his ear.
"It's good to be back," he said, releasing her. Her body had felt stiff compared to the embraces they had shared a week before, when she had been pliant and willing in his arms. The tension between them was only slightly less than it had been the morning he had last seen her. He wondered if any of their friends noticed.
They had gone to the diner and sat in a large semi-circular booth. Nick had gotten caught between Warrick and Catherine. Sara sat on the opposite side of Warrick and Greg was on her right. Warrick had put his arm around Sara's shoulder at one point and stretched it all the way to Greg.
"Heard that was a tough case," he said to both. Sara didn't say anything. She only stared at her vegetable omelet. Warrick had patted Greg on the back and then squeezed Sara lightly.
"Bad case all around," Greg said. The somber notes in his usually upbeat voice said more than his words. Nick had a flash of insight.
"The 15 year old girl," he said. Sara looked up at him, surprised. He saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. Then he saw her steel herself and push them back. His heart went out to her.
"Yeah," Greg said. "It was her mother's boyfriend. Sold her to some dude to wipe out his drug debts. The mother knew. Didn't want to tell us at first because she was so terrified of the boyfriend. Bad case all around," he repeated. "Sara threw her worst bad cop on the mother in the interrogation room with Brass. It was like bad cop and super bad cop," Greg said, grinning. Nick wondered how he could be so obtuseto how this was affecting Sara. No one else at the table seemed to realize it either.
Warrick got up to go to the rest room. When he came back, he squeezed in beside Catherine to keep from making everyone get up. Nick and Sara sat side-by-side, stiff as boards. Nick wished he had the guts to put his arm around her as easily as Warrick had earlier. He worried that she would take it the wrong way.
When he watched her pay her bill and walk out to the truck, it was like watching a shadow of the real Sara. He decided to follow her home, to make sure she made it.
She climbed into the SUV and drove a couple of blocks when she noticed Nick behind her. He missed his turn and continued following her. She called his cell phone.
"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded. It came out harsher than she had intended, but the combination of the case and seeing Nick again had taken its toll on her emotions.
"I'm making sure you get home safely," he replied, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. Sara couldn't think of a reason why it wasn't, but it still fired her raw emotions.
"You don't have to baby sit me," she spat and shut the cell phone. Part of her felt vindicated. The other part felt guilty for being so mean. She was as much to blame for this tension between them as he was. Nick was still following her in the rearview mirror. She fumed for a couple more blocks.
"Be reasonable," a small voice pleaded in her head. "He's being an adult about this situation. You are the one that has been avoiding him like a middle school student. Looks like another one of those unresolved situations to me," the voice added. It sounded suspiciously like her counselor. "True," Sara admitted to herself. She looked back at Nick's Denali in the rearview mirror. She dialed him again.
"I'm not going to quit following you just because you hung up on me," he said. Sara was a little perturbed at how amiable he sounded.
"I was calling to apologize," she said. Her tone was not apologetic.
"Wow. That's really out of character," Nick said, and laughed. He did not hear laughter on the other end of the line. "It was a joke, Sara."
"I know. But it's a true joke," she returned. She felt on the verge of tears. "It's been a really tough 36 hours," she said, her voice betraying her with a tiny crack.
"I know it's been rough. That's why I wanted to follow you," he said. That did make her break down and sob. She ended the call and cried through two blocks. When she pulled into the parking lot at her home, she forced herself to breathe calmly and wiped the tears away. She needed to appear strong. If she appeared strong, she could be strong.
She got out of her vehicle and waved to Nick, who had pulled into another parking place. She could tell he had a concerned look on his face. She straightened up and walked purposefully into her townhouse. She had managed to wash her face and put on her pajama bottoms and a t-shirt when a knock sounded at her door. She knew who it was before she opened it.
"We've got to get over this," Nick said when he walked into the room. "I can't see you like this and not help. If you need to tell me about the case and cry all night, then fine. But we have got to go back to talking. Maybe we screwed up a little bit, but we can work this out." He was standing with his hands on his hips, talking to the wall behind her. He was not meeting her eyes. She wondered if he had practiced this speech in the truck and then gotten the nerve to come to her door. She would have never been able to do it. He finally looked at her. She was surprised at the rush of feeling that came with looking into his eyes. She stepped forward and kissed him passionately. Nick pulled away, angered.
"You can't do this," he said in a low voice. This time Sara was the one avoiding eye contact. "You can't sleep with me and then avoid me for a week. It's not fair."
"I know. I know," she said. "I keep thinking of death and betrayal, and the only thing that takes it away seems to be us having sex. It's that or booze, I guess," Sara said. She knew she was using Nick to anesthetize her pain. At first she had rationalized that she had done it for him, to help him through a bad time, but she knew that her real reasons were all selfish.
Nick was fighting with himself. The desire to hold Sara, to cling to her through the nightmares was overwhelming. He knew that he could fight the fear if he could feel her beside him. At the same time, he wanted to grab her and shake her senseless for treating him the way she had.
"You can't jerk me around like this Sara. I have been your friend for a long time. I can't take this if you are going to avoid me for two weeks, then let me come back around like a toy." He felt hot tears prickling at his eyes. "If you want to fuck, fine," he said, dramatically pulling his t-shirt over his head and throwing it on the floor. "Fuck me five ways 'til Sunday. But let's just call a spade a spade and admit that we are going to do that. Then maybe we can quit dancing around each other on eggshells." By this time, he had pulled his shoes off and thrown them harshly against her floor. He shucked his jeans and stood in his boxers and socks in her living room. "Maybe then we can go back to being friends," he said.
Sara should have felt remorse. She thought she should probably feel a little guilty for treating Nick as she had for the past week, and she did. But something about the sight of him standing in her home in his underwear, glaring at her, struck her frayed nerves as funny. She tried to stifle them, but the giggles came through the hands covering her mouth.
"What the hell is so funny?" Nick demanded.
"Five ways 'til Sunday?" Sara said between giggles. She walked over to Nick and put her arms around him. He stiffened at her embrace. They stood like that for a few moments.
"I am sorry about treating you like this," she said. She felt Nick's arms tighten around her. He sighed noisily.
"I know you are. I know you're fighting fears just like I am," he answered. "I don't want to lose what we had before. I don't want to be all about screwing around. You need to talk to me. We need to be able to talk to each other."
"What if it's only partially about screwing around?" Sara said. Was the idea of having a friendship that involved sex so disastrous?
"I don't know," he said. Nick would admit privately that he had been a ladies' man, of a sort, at one time. He had changed as he had gotten older. Even in his younger days, he had never treated anyone in what he thought was a disrespectful manner. " I wouldn't feel right about using you," he said.
"Even if I'm using you too," Sara countered. She didn't dare look at him. She kept holding him tightly. She was afraid of what she might see in his face: rejection, disgust, or worse. "We would still be friends, but you know the old saying, friends with benefits," she said.
Nick felt his resolve crumbling. He wanted Sara. She was right; they had used each other. Was it so wrong to be there for each other in a different way? They weren't promising forever or even next week.
"We have to get over this embarrassment and guilt," he said. She could tell his resistance was fading away. She leaned back to look at his face, finally. She kissed him softly, a different kiss than any of the ones they had shared before.
"We're just friends," she said. She could see a smile beginning the crinkle the corners of his eyes.
"Friends that happen to fall into bed?" he asked, a touch sarcastically. He kissed her back in the same soft manner she had kissed him. It was a kiss of promise. The promise though, was of no need to promise.
"No regrets, no looking back," she said.
"Yeah, but you have to mean it this time," Nick said. He sighed and shook his head. She knew he had made his decision. "I guess we can't mess this up any more than we already have," he said. She had to agree with that statement.
Though Sara had never thought of herself as a particularly small person, Nick swooped her up into his arms as if she were nothing. He carried her across the living room to where he knew her bedroom was.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked, flirtatiously.
"I am going to show you five ways 'til Sunday."
1:00 pm came too early for Nick. Just yesterday he had been itching to be back at work, in the swing of things. Now he lay in Sara's bed, thinking about where this was going. He thought he knew. It was going nowhere. He couldn't decide if he was OK with that or not. There was no doubting that he had slept better in her bed than he had in the past week. That included the fact that they had stayed up late talking about the case that had driven her to tears and his stymieing fear of every dark corner at the B&E.
He slipped out of bed and crept down the hall into her bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror. They had decided to be friends with benefits. How long would this last? What if Sara met someone today who swept her off her feet? How would he make it through a day of sleeping then?
He went back into her bedroom to retrieve his socks and underwear. Sara rose up groggily from her bed.
"You leaving?" she asked. She had lain back down and pulled the pillow he had slept on to her like a child's teddy bear.
"Yeah, I've got to head home and get ready for work," he said pulling his boxers on. He sat on the edge of the bed. "Call me when you get up?" he asked.
"I'll just see you when I come in at 12," she said. She had closed her eyes again. The triple shift had taken a toll on her.
"You promise?" Nick placed a hand on her arm. "You promise you'll see me. I'll wait for you," he said. He was not going to let her pull the same trick as last week.
"I promise," she said. She opened her eyes. The awkwardness she thought she might feel was not as strong as before. The fact that they both knew this was just a more physical expression of their friendship had made a world of difference to Sara.
She kept her promise. She came in a little early and they shared a cup of coffee in the break room. Warrick had been there, and it had been easy. Every minute it seemed to get easier. She could tell Nick felt that way too.
"What are you doing after shift?" she asked.
"My man Nick and I are going to play some ball. It's been a while," Warrick said. Nick grinned at him. "We need to get a game going with you and Greg," Warrick said. Sara laughed.
"Have you seen Greg play ball?" she said.
"Have you seen Nick?" returned Warrick. Sara looked at Nick and smiled. She had seen Nick do a lot of things.
When they left, Nick had trailed Warrick out the door. He turned back and smiled at her.
"Call me, if you have a tough shift," he said. She had smiled back and nodded her head. This was going to work.