Disclaimer: Only Ozzie is mine.
A/N: OOOh. That last chapter got some of you Snickers. Good. That's what I was going for. What's a love triangle without three parties? Sara has a choice to make, and it has to be hard.
Nick had picked up his father at the airport early Friday. His head was still pounding from all the alcohol he had drank the day before. He hadn't shaved, and the last look he had given himself in the mirror had shown a tired, wasted face. This wasn't how he really wanted to greet his father, but it was better than sending a cab. He hoped his sunglasses hid most of the damage he had done to his system. He had taken aspirin and was currently working on his second bottle of water. He sipped slowly, afraid that drinking too fast would cause his body to rebel.
He saw his father's silver hair in the crowd and immediately started to feel better. His parents wouldn't appreciate the predicament he had gotten himself into, but there was no one else he could talk to about this subject. His father had met Sara, but he didn't know her, and everyone around Nick knew her too well. Nick depended on his father's abilities as a judge to be objective, and on his sentiments as a parent to help him out.
Nick waved his hand and caught his father's eye. The two men embraced,and Nick was glad he was wearing sunglasses, because he could feel tears burning his red eyes.
"You smell like a brewery, Pancho," his dad said. Nick laughed. Cisco always got to the point.
"That would be because I drank myself into a stupor after we talked last night," he said, grabbing one of his dad's bags.
"That bad?" Cisco asked. Nick only nodded his head. "So where are we off too?"
"Somewhere I can get away from the lights of Vegas and my own apartment," Nick answered. He already had the truck loaded with camping and fishing gear that hadn't been used in a while. That had been a Herculean task with his head protesting the way it had.
"That sounds like woman trouble, Pancho," his dad said, and smiled gently.
"You have no idea," Nick answered. "You hungry?" he asked, changing the subject. As much as he wanted to talk to his dad about the whole situation, he didn't want to do it on the drive. He wanted to be out on the lake or sitting by a campfire.
"Starved," his dad answered with a smile. Talk could always wait until Nick was ready.
Nick's relationship with his father had always been close, though it had grown strained during his teenage years, as many did. Even then, he and Cisco had always been able to get along about two things: baseball and fishing.
The one thing he always thought he needed was Cisco's approval, and he had gone to great lengths to get it in the past. As he had grown older, though, he began to see his dad as more of a friend. Nick's need for approval had dissipated, whether it was from his dad, or even Grissom as his supervisor. He figured it was all a part of being confident in your job or your life. And since being buried alive, Nick hadn't cared as much what anyone had to say.
Except Sara.
Now his confidence in the direction of his life had taken a down turn and he felt he needed his dad's advice, if not approval, again. He drove, his head pounding, listening to his dad singing the song on the radio. His dad always sang a little off key and behind the music. From Sara's comments, Nick realized that he did this as well. They talked about family and friends back in Texas as they set up the campsite. Nick mostly listened and cracked open a cold beer from the cooler. He handed it to his dad, who drank and sighed appreciatively. Nick drank from his own can. The beer finally tempered his headache some and his stomach quit griping at him.
They fished, catching a few, throwing most back. They made it back to camp and made a campfire. They sat in foldout lounge chairs at the fire's edge. With the dark held at bay by the orange flames, but still close enough to shield Nick from any disapproving glances his father might have, Nick felt ready to talk. His father must have sensed that the time was right.
"So, Nick, what's going on here? You sounded worse yesterday than you have since you came back to Vegas. In fact, in the past few months, you've sounded great," his dad said. Nick heard the concern in his father's voice. He wondered how much of it had been telegraphed from his mother.
"I have screwed up. Badly," Nick answered. He remembered the look Sara had worn on her face when she kicked him out. She had been mad, but mostly he remembered the hurt. He had never wanted to cause her to hurt like that.
"A lady friend?"
"Sara," Nick answered. His dad gave a chuckle and Nick tried to find his expression in the firelight.
"Your mom said something was going on with y'all," Cisco said. "She told me two months ago that she thought you and Sara were getting very friendly." His dad laughed again. "She is always right about you kids."
"How did she know?" Nick asked. His mom had never asked him about Sara.
"She said that every time you were going to do something, Sara was with you. And I think Sara answered your phone a couple of times when she called." His dad sighed. "Now I owe her a weekend at some spa."
"You bet on it?" Nick asked, incredulous.
"Well, hell, son. Either way I won. A spa with your mom or a weekend of her waiting on me hand and foot, including massages," he answered. Nick blanched at the lascivious way his dad said massages.
"Way too much information there, Cisco," he said. His dad laughed at that.
"So what went wrong with your girlfriend?" his dad asked.
"Well, for starters, she's not my girlfriend. It was an accident at first," Nick started. He wasn't sure how to explain, so he just dove in. "We accidentally slept together, I guess you could say. It just happened. Then it happened again, in the heat of the moment," he said.
"There is no way to accidentally make love to a woman, son," Cisco said. "I just don't think it works that way. Do we need to have the sex talk again? I thought you got the idea back when you were twelve," Cisco said. Nick sighed. He had actually gotten the idea earlier than that, but his parents had never known. Nick never wanted to tell them. He couldn't bear the guilt that they would put upon themselves.
"I think I've got the idea, Daddy. What I meant was that the first couple of times weren't intentional. We did not set out with that out come in mind."
"So then what? It became intentional but you aren't dating?" his dad said. To Nick's surprise, his dad's tone wasn't dripping with disapproval.
"Yeah. Sara called it 'friends with benefits'. I swear Cisco, she is the one thing that has helped me come back to my job and my life. She has become my best friend."
"She doesn't want more than friends?" Cisco asked. He sounded a little disbelieving.
"Sara's complicated. It's just that once we started, it was an outlet for both of us to overcome the things we've seen and the things that have happened in our lives. The only times I have slept for more than a few hours have been with her in the bed. I think it's that way for her too." He paused for a moment. "I know it's that way for her too."
"What's made a difference?" Cisco asked. "Why are you out here camping with me instead of your best bud?"
"She met someone," Nick said forlornly.
"So she broke it off with you?"
"No," Nick said. When he started laying all this out for his father, it sounded incredibly stupid. "This new guy is a detective we work with. I knew he was interested in her. In fact, he told me he wanted to ask her out." Nick took a deep breath. "I was going to tell her that we needed to quit and that she needed to go out with this guy, because I was afraid I was holding her back from what could have been the real thing for her.
"She found out that he and I had talked about her and freaked out. Then we had a big scene at her place and she kicked me out. Then you called, then I got drunk and here we are." For some reason, none of it sounded quite as dramatic as it had been. Even now, Nick could feel his broken heart throb, but telling the story sounded anticlimatic. He was having a hard time remembering when it had become such a good idea for Sara to go out with Perrin.
His dad was silent for a few moments and Nick stared into the fire, wondering where Sara was, and whether she was with Ozzie. He wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again without drinking his liver into a toxic state. He tortured himself by imagining Ozzie with his tanned arm around her.
"So, let me summarize," Cisco said. Nick's ears perked up. This was the way Cisco always approached a problem. First he summarized and clarified the issues.
"You and Sara are best friends. I assume this means you do things together other than have sex?" His dad's tone was matter-of-fact. Nick thought of it as the "judge" tone.
"Yeah, yessir," Nick stammered. Even now, his dad's cross-examinations were nerve wracking.
"Ok. So you and Sara are best friends. You also sleep together on a regular basis, and this provides some measure of comfort for each of you. It's mutual in that respect. You are worried that she won't go on to what could potentially be a loving relationship because of you. You had a fight, and now you are worried that you won't be friends any longer. Are you also jealous of the other guy? Are you scared of facing life without being able to hold onto her?" his father asked.
"Yes."
"To which question?"
"To both," Nick said simply. He was scared of facing the nightmares knowing that he wouldn't be able to lose himself in Sara. He knew that he wouldn't be able to like Ozzie if he and Sara did start dating because of jealousy and pettiness. It wasn't a pretty self-portrait, but he thought it was true.
"I guess the simplest question is, do you love her?" Cisco asked.
"I love her, as a friend, but I don't know if I'm in love with her. I mean, I guess if I have to ask, it isn't true, right?" Nick asked. It might be a simple question, but he had no idea what the real answer was. He had thought about it until he felt his ears would bleed and his head explode.
He could see his father's pursed lips in the flickering orange light. Cisco brought his hand up to his lips for a moment, and then Nick thought that he smiled.
"Nick, by the time you came along, your mother and I had been married more than 15 years. You've gathered, I'm sure, that you were an accident of sorts. Your mom and I thought we were finished having children when Ruthie and Ruby were born. That was four years before you.
"Anyway, you never really saw what your mom and I were like in our first years together. We argued all the time. That was just an extension of how we were in law school. You know, when your mother and I met, she was engaged to another fellow." Nick looked at his dad in shock. He had never heard this part of his parent's story. From his point of view, his parents had always gotten along extremely well. They had bickered some, but it always seemed good-natured.
"You busted up her engagement?" Nick asked. He couldn't imagine his father even entertaining the idea of dating a girl who was promised to another.
"Hell no. Well, not really. Your mom and I were friends. That is, at first, we were study partners. It was a good match, because we debated everything. We argued all of the time. I guess it makes sense, because I became a prosecutor and she became a defense attorney. It took a while for us to even become real friends, because we would make each other so mad.
"When it was time for us to graduate law school, I found myself getting so mad at her, I could strangle her. She kept going on about how she and her doctor fiancé were going to set up shop in his hometown in West Texas, and I kept telling her it was a waste of her talents. Oh, would she flay me with words." His dad chuckled with the memory.
"So what happened? Obviously, you two became more than friends," Nick said.
"Two months into my first job, I was a wreck. I couldn't think, I wasn't sleeping, and I was not impressing my new bosses. I couldn't imagine what was wrong with me. All I could think about was her. I wondered how she was doing, and how the wedding plans were coming. I finally got up the nerve to call her. The only time I was worth a damn was for the day after I had spoken with her on the phone. So I started calling her every day.
"She told me about how the good doctor wasn't as keen on her being a working lawyer as he had first professed. She was disappointed, and I could tell she was at a crossroads. Then she told me that she didn't know if we could continue being such close friends after she was married. It seemed the fiancé wasn't keen on her being friends with me either." His father, the judge and the tough lawyer, had tears in his eyes at the memory of almost losing his mother. Nick was astounded. Cisco wiped his eyes and smiled.
"After we got off the phone that day, we were both crying, though I had waited until we hung up to really bawl. Then it occurred to me that I couldn't live without her. I knew I could hardly live with her, we fought so much, but living without her had been awful, and the idea of continuing it was worse.
"I guess what I'm saying is this: sex, well, you can get it a lot of places. Is it the sex that was getting you through, or was it Sara? I found out I loved your mother the moment I realized I couldn't live without her, and that is a fact I've kept going back to over the years. Even in marriage, you fall in and out of love, though under it all you have to be friends. But I know that the minute I have to go on without her will be the hardest minute I've dealt with in more than fifty years."
Nick was openly gaping at his father.
"What did you do to get her away from the doctor?" Nick asked. He couldn't believe he had never heard this story. Did his sisters know the story? Did his brother?
"I kidnapped her," Cisco said in his matter-of-fact way.
"What the hell?" Nick exclaimed. For a few moments at least, Sara was not on his mind.
"We went for a drive, and she said the most beautiful sentence I had ever heard come from her lips at that time, 'I'm thinking of breaking up with the doctor'. So I kept driving until we got to my parent's house. And I asked her if she would mind still having the wedding with me as the groom." Cisco grinned at the memory.
"And that was that?" Nick asked. His mother had fallen for that corny line?
"Well, it helped that I told her I had been miserable without her, and that I wanted to do whatever would make her stay with me forever. And then we went in and called her family. It was a big scandal." Nick could only imagine how his grandmother, his mother's mother, had taken the news. This was the same woman who was so into tradition that she had forced him into cotillion classes as a kid.
"Well, Pancho, this old man is ready to turn in. I'm not used to these late hours," his dad said and got up from the lounge chair. "I guess you've got some decisions to make," he said as he went into his tent.
"Cisco," Nick said. His father turned to look at him. "Mom must have been miserable without you too, right?" he asked.
"She told me that she had been making do with the doctor until I came around. Knowing how stubborn your mom is, she probably would have waited up until the day of the wedding for me to come to my senses if I hadn't driven out to see her."
Nick sat in the camp chair and stared into the fire. What decisions were there to make? Sara may have already made them for him. What if he was the stubborn one waiting for her to come to her senses?
Sara woke quite early Saturday, and she was still dazzled a little by the date with Ozzie. Thinking about his kiss made her tingly all over. And that tingling made her think of Nick. Why did everything lead her back to Nick? She wondered if he had made it back home. She needed to call and apologize. She needed to know that they would be OK, eventually.
She had gone into a cleaning frenzy after her run, trying not to think about Ozzie and Nick. Warrick had told her to go out with Ozzie. Well, she had, and it was great. Now what? Warrick hadn't told her what to do afterwards. Though Sara would not admit it to anyone else, and it pained her to admit it to herself, she would really love for someone to tell her what to do next, because she was doing a piss poor job of figuring it out for herself. She looked at the clock. She still had a few hours before she would go into the swing shift. She and Warrick had the case they were working on, and Catherine had let her know that she would approve her overtime if she would come in and help while Nick was out.
She called Nick's home phone, praying that he wouldn't answer, and he didn't. She left a message that she had rehearsed before.
"Hey. When you come back from your trip, give me a call. We need to talk. I'm, I'm sorry, for, well, anyway, call me. This is Sara," she finished lamely. All that rehearsal had been for naught.
She opened her refrigerator to find it as empty as it had been several days before. She looked at the clock again, and decided to go grocery shopping before going in. Once at the store, it kept crossing her mind that the last time she had been there, Nick had been with her.
What if Nick had been the date last night? Sara tried to block the thought out of her mind, but it remained, interfering with her ability to accurately read the ingredient label on the back of the frozen dinner she was looking at. She threw it in her cart and gave in, imagining a real date with Nick. Going out, holding hands, waiting with baited breath for his kiss – all of these were things that would never be, because they couldn't seem to make it much past supper without going at it.
That wasn't true. They went shopping, they had gone rock climbing and Nick had even convinced her to try hang-gliding. But even when they had gone climbing (it had just been a rock climbing wall, but still difficult), all she had been able to think about was how nice it was going to be to get Nick back to his place and peel those sweaty clothes off him and pile along with hers on the way to theshower.
She had seen him at some of his worst moments, and she had seen him at some of his best. And vice versa. Warrick was right again. They had been very good for each other. Nick had made it plain he wasn't her boyfriend. Was that what she wanted?
Ozzie made it plain that he wanted to be her boyfriend. Was that what she wanted?
Sara made it through buying a few groceries and getting back home. When she began unpacking them, she noticed she had bought lasagna with meat sauce. She put it disgustedly into the freezer, wondering if Nick would ever have occasion to eat it. She looked at her answering machine. No messages. She packed her meal for the evening and went to work, her mood darkening as she went.
Warrick was in the locker room when she got there. He gave her a knowing smile.
"So how did dinner go?" he asked. Sara wanted to bite back at him, but the memory of her lovely evening intruded.
"It went well," she answered, going for terse, but coming off as reluctant.
"I heard it went very well," Warrick said. "I saw Ozzie right afterwards. The man was dancing on air," he said. It had amused Warrick to no end to see the effect Sara had on the older detective. The teasing from Warrick should have made Sara crazy, but instead it made her smile. She tried to hide it with a twist of her mouth, but she couldn't, especially when she thought about the goodnight kiss. Warrick laughed at her as she blushed.
"OK. OK. It was a good date," she confessed. Warrick laughed again.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," he teased. Then he thought of Nick and wished he hadn't said it. "That is, welcome back to the dating world," he amended. "So, are you going out with him again?"
"I guess. I haven't decided," she said. "In reality, he hasn't exactly asked. He said he would call me today sometime."
"If the first date was good, what would stop you from going out with him again?" Warrick asked. Sara gave him a look that communicated it clearly. "Have you talked to the other him?" Warrick asked, speaking of Nick.
"No. I left him a message," Sara said. She could feel her mood dim again. She looked up at Warrick as he stepped closer to her locker.
"You know that Nick is my bro, but Sara, you've got to do what's good for you, just like Nick needs to do what is good for him," he said. "If you don't show up here with your game tight, we all suffer."
"Bring it on, because my game is tight tonight," Sara said, giving him a challenging stare.
"Don't tempt the Fates, girl," Warrick warned, "at least not until you are with Sanders next shift."
The Fates had listened to Warrick, because Sara, Greg and Grissom pulled a double homicide. The victims were twin girls, about fourteen, and they had been reported missing about a month before. Rape, abuse,and murder, and all in the family from the DNA evidence they had pulled. Sara wanted nothing more than to go home and scrub the day away in the hottest shower she could possibly endure. Grissom had watched her behind his inscrutable blue eyes most of the evening, and she thought she had passed his test. Greg was a bundle of raw nerves, and Sara felt more than a little sorry for witnessing his continual loss of innocence in this job. Sometimes she wished for the old Greggo, but she knew there were times that he had made her shifts so much easier for simply being with her and being his goofy self.
The drive home was almost unbearable. She found herself waiting for Nick's phone call, and looking for him at the diner on the way home. She almost turned to go to his house, but continued on her way to her apartment. This was a morning that she would have gladly gone to his house and let him feed her waffles. He would have lit candles for her in the bathroom and scrubbed her back in the shower.
The cell phone interrupted her reverie, snapping her back to the reality that showers with Nick wouldn't be happening any time soon, or probably ever again. She immediately felt tears prick her tired eyes, and fought them back in order to answer the whining cell phone.
"Sidle," she said. She was glad that her voice didn't choke up. She unconsciously smiled when Ozzie's bright voice came to her through the cellular phone.
"Hi Sidle," he said. "How's about joining an old guy for breakfast? Or supper if that's what you want to call it."
"I would Oz, but I am almost home and the hot, hot shower is calling my name," she said. Breakfast with anyone would have been good, and she thought Ozzie would cheer her up pretty well. Thoughts of a bare chested Nick Stokes intruded for a moment, but she pushed them away roughly.
"You sound tired. Not to put it bluntly, but you sound like shit, Sara. Another tough case?" Ozzie asked. He sounded concerned. She could picture his green eyes filled with worry. Worry for her, and not the kind of pitying worry that she hated.
"Yeah, it was really bad. I think poor Greg would have liked to been able to puke at one point, but he's gotten too tough."
"What if I brought breakfast to you?" Ozzie offered. Sara thought a moment. The idea of breakfast coming to her was a good one, but she knew what would have happened if it had been Nick bringing her breakfast. Would it be the same with Ozzie?
"I don't know, Ozzie," she began. "I'm not very good company right now."
"The best time for a friend with food," he said. "No strings, Sara. Just a listener bearing take out plates. Your choice: breakfast, 24 hour Italian, or 24 hour Chinese."
Sara relented.
"Vegetable Lo Mein would be really good."
When she got off the phone, she realized she had a sappy grin on her face. She tried to wipe it away, but it kept springing back into place. Once she was in her shower, alone, the memories of the last week came on strong, and she cried, for the girls, for herself and for Nick.
A/N: I know the last chapter was making some of you Snickers crazy. I don't know if this one helped or not. The next chapter is almost finished, and it is the last! Yeah!
SnickersFans - you know who you are. Just stick with me! And no, I am not going to kill Ozzie.
DarkDreamer - Thanks, as always. One more to go!
Jacinda - Glad you liked the humor! I am glad you like Ozzie. I think him being likable is pretty pivotal to the story being strong.
Anushka - You were kidding about Vartann? Dang. Guess those other 15 chapters will have to be scrapped. Glad you are so into the story. Does this chapter clarify Sara any more? I think she is confused and scared because she is so used to having defensive walls up. As far as a Nick/Sara/Grissom triangle, I might try my hand at it later, but I think my angst reserve is tapped right now. You will probably be seeing a couple of fluff pieces from me in the next month. Thanks so much for your reviews. I hope you'll like the next chapter.