The Garage

Brass' slide locked back as he emptied his clip, and he pressed the button to bring his target to the front as he glanced over at the tall brunette beside him, a frown marring her features as she stared down at her own target. As always, when Sara was troubled or upset, Brass found himself resisting the uncharacteristic urge to give her a hug and soothe her like he would his much younger daughter. Sometimes his restraint bothered him, like it did now, so he tried to draw her out. "Not your best," he noted carefully, watching her jaw tighten in anger—not directed at him, but at herself.

"Yeah."

"It's ok to be… distracted." He had searched for a better word to describe her mood, but everything else seemed likely to cause more, not less, stress, and he could see the slight tremble in her hand that told him she was already on the edge. It seemed like every time she got on top of things lately, something new and unexpected happened to send her skidding back into the dark place she had just left, and he stared at her, concern etching his face while his heart broke.

"Yeah," she agreed again, in complete monotone, as she bent down to police the brass at her feet. Jim did the same, wincing a little as his knees popped. They worked in silence for a few minutes, the sound casing clinking in the can sounding a steady rhythm to speed their work. Brass finally stopped, leaned back on his heels, and stared at the woman beside him.

"Are you going to let me in?" Sara sighed, a deep exhalation, but didn't otherwise respond. She continued to work steadily, not turning, not talking. "Sara… please?"

Her head sagged on her neck, as if she suddenly lost the strength to hold it up. "I'm sorry," she said in her low voice, her vowels elongating slightly like they did when she was trying to find words. "I'm really not good at talking about myself or my feelings."

"And I am? Yeah, us cops from Jersey are known for our soft sides."

She gave a short sniff of laughter at that, her head dipping lower to lean against the shelf support. "I don't know why I'm so freaked out about this. It's not like I had much to lose anyway. No mementos, family heirlooms, nothing really except a cheap mattress, a shoddy couch, and some clothes. Nothing I can't replace." A long silence stretched, and Jim could see her eyes were closed and her jaw was clenched. "I don't even remember what store I went to yesterday to pick up some stuff. I only managed to go through two aisles before I bolted out. I must have looked crazy. I must have scared the cashier, but I can't remember what she looked like. But I just don't know why this is so hard."

Jim spoke the words he knew were going through her head, unvoiced. "If you had been home, you would have been killed."

"Yeah." She lapsed into silence again, and when she opened her eyes, a haunted expression lurked there in the dark depths.

"Hey, I know," Jim began cheerfully, "I'm off tonight, so why don't we run to the mall, do some shopping?" When she snapped her head around to shoot him a suspicious look, he held up his hands in surrender. "I'll just be there to" he shrugged, "tell you how great you look when you try on clothes and get loaded down with the bags. I'll…," his voice slid lower, softer, "just be there."

Finally, she nodded, giving him a slight smile before standing up, brushing at the dust on her trousers. "Deal. But afterwards, I'm taking you out for a nice dinner."

"Hey, do I look like a guy who likes to miss meals? Or who turns down a beautiful woman asking me out?" This time, a different emotion flickered across her face, but before he could identify it, it was gone. "Ok, let's get these guns cleaned so we can hit the Gap." As Sara rolled her eyes at his choice of store, he chuckled. "What, I thought that's where all the young kids shop."

When her cell rang in the middle of said store, she opened it with a distracted, "Sidle," giving Jim an apologetic wiggle of her eyebrows.

"Hey, girl, where you been?"

"Oh, hey, Warrick. I was at the shooting range with Brass. I left a note."

"Yeah, I saw that when I woke up. I just expected to see you before I left for work."

Sara glanced down at watch in surprise. They had been shopping for much longer than she thought. "Oh, shit, Warrick, I totally lost track of time. We're, uh, shopping."

"We? As in you and Brass? Oh, man, I have to be missing out on seeing Brass follow you though the underwear department at Sears? That's so not fair."

"I do not buy my underwear at Sears," she retorted, but with a slight grin. Brass leaned in close to the handset and said, loudly enough for Warrick to hear, "You should have seen the black lace number at Victoria Secrets…" Warrick heard a muttered curse and the sound of Sara's hand connecting with Brass' stomach, and he laughed as he imagined the death glare Sara had fixed on the captain. "For your information, it was navy blue, not black," she informed him, and he could hear her smirk across the line.

"Oh, navy blue, I forgot. It must be the twelve pairs of shoes I'm carrying around that are making me weak and feeble-minded. Hey Rick, you're going to have to buy a bigger house to hold all this stuff. Sara has a serious shoe fetish I never knew about."

He heard her giggle into the phone, and he smiled in response. "Hey, I should go. Jim is starting to act like a martyr because I'm making him carry TWO pairs of shoes, so I better feed him before he turns on me and makes me carry my own bags. Have a good shift and I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll catch you tomorrow."

He shut the phone with a snap, still grinning, as he entered the break room. "Was that Sara?" Catherine asked as she looked up from the paper she was reading. "How's she doing?"

Setting down the basket of baked goods on the table, Warrick grabbed a napkin and picked up a muffin. "I think she's doing ok. I didn't see her this evening; she and Brass went shooting and then, apparently, shopping." He chuckled. "A lot of the techs are going to be bummed to find out that Brass got to go underwear shopping with Sara at Victoria's Secret."

Nick had just walked in the door, only to stop dead. "Now that was something I never wanted to visualize ever again." He shuddered. "This whole Brass/Sara friendship thing gives me the wiles. I mean, she always did have a thing for older guys." He nodded his head in the direction of Grissom's office and missed Warrick's eyes narrowing in consternation. "Oh, hey, muffins. Cath, you shouldn't have," he said as he grabbed one.

Catherine shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands. "I didn't."

"Sara did," Warrick told him.

The muffin stopped halfway to Nick's mouth as his hands froze, and he swallowed, glancing at Warrick nervously. "Sara? Baked muffins?"

"From scratch," Warrick assured him, his grin widening as Nick slowly lowered the muffin. "Well, maybe I'm not as hungry as I thought I was," he began as Warrick shook his head. "Nick, Nick, Nick, if Sara comes back to work and her muffins are sitting around, uneaten, she'll be hurt. Just eat one and get it over with, ok?"

Nick sighed and took a hesitant bite, chewing slowly as if he was trying to decide if it was poisoned, before he looked at them both with surprise. "Hey, this is good." He took another bite. "This is really good. Are you sure, uh, Sara made these? Maybe she just slipped out while you were sleeping and picked them up from a bakery."

Curious, Catherine reached for a pastry herself, taking an experimental nibble, and then shot Warrick an amazed look. "Yeah, all Sara. And you should try the wheat bread she baked: I had it for toast today …"

xxx

Two days later Sara wandered into the break room, stretching the kinks out of her neck as she headed for the coffee pot. Catherine's pen clicked in time to the radio as she sat at the table with her feet up, going over paperwork. "Hey, Cath," Sara hoisted the pot so she could see, "want a warm up?"

"Sure," Catherine said distractedly, holding up her cup as she kept reading. When she looked up to smile her thanks, she seemed to realize it was Sara, and she indicated the chair at her side. "First time we've had a breather all night. How are you holding up?"

"I'll be fine if people stop asking me that." Sara shot Catherine a sheepish grin to take the sting out of her words, "Sorry, but if one more person lowers their voice into that sympathetic tone to ask how I'm doing, I'm going to scream." Sighing, she dropped her head down to rotate it on her neck. "I just want everything to be back to normal, is that too much to ask?" she said, her voice muffled by her hands.

"Maybe. Sara, I'm sure everyone's saying the same thing, but for half an hour, we thought you were dead. You weren't here, you didn't see how people took that news. Jacqui disappeared into the washroom for fifteen minutes, I heard Doc Robbins cleared the morgue so nobody could see him break down, and Nick wasn't allowed to show any emotion because he had to sit here and hold me while I cried." Sara's eyes were wide as she listened to Catherine's recitation. "They're asking how you are doing because otherwise they are going to break down like I did at the scene the other night, and they know that would just embarrass you."

"I guess." Sipping her coffee, Sara leaned back in her chair, feeling the tension in her back creep up her shoulders. "The worst thing is the people I expected to be normal around me, like Nick and Greg, are acting weird around me."

"Weird?"

"Yeah. Greg hasn't flirted with me since I came back to work – he's all business every time I see him—and he seems very stiff and formal every time I'm around. And he nearly jumped out of his skin when Warrick came into the DNA lab looking for me. David won't make eye contact at all; he was staring at his shoes so hard he almost walked into an open drawer. And Nick… I expected to be busted for that chocolate syrup comment and nothing." She shook her head. "Not a damn thing. That's weird. And not just them either. Did I do something to make everyone mad at me?"

Catherine suddenly found her paperwork very interesting, and she bent back over it with renewed vigor. "No, nothing I can think of."

"But everyone seemed normal the morning after working the explosion. Nick and Greg both looked like they were coming up with a years worth of material on the spot after I made that slip." She sighed and rested her head on her hand. "They're all on edge, like something happened."

"Nothing I can think of," Catherine repeated, scribbling a note on a report.

Sara's head shot up. "Catherine. What happened?"

"I don't…"

"Something happened and you know." Sara reached out and slid the folder away from blonde woman. "You are never this interested in paperwork. Tell me."

"I, umm…" Catherine gave a huge, heartfelt sigh. "I really don't want to be in the middle of this. Can't you just ask one of them?" She saw, however, from Sara's stubborn expression that she wasn't getting out of this one. "Warrick… may have said something to Greg and Nick. For them to leave you alone."

"He did, huh?"

"To be fair, it had been a pretty lousy night for you and they were already starting to rib Warrick pretty hard. He just wanted them to ease up on you."

"And nobody thought to tell Warrick I can fight my own battles?" Her tone was lethal, as were her narrowed eyes, but a second later, she let out a huge breath and relaxed into her seat. "At least the mystery is solved. I thought I had been propelled into an alternative universe or something. Thanks." She shook her head. "I'll talk to them. All of them," she said ominously as she left the room.

Leaning against the doorframe of the room, she watched Nick work on putting the glass back together for a few minutes before she spoke. "So I hear I'm plutonium." When he glanced up at her, puzzled, she continued, "As in, hands off?"

His grin answered the one spreading across her face, and he laughed. "So who told on Rick?"

"Not important. I'll talk to him, ok?"

She turned to head out, but swung back to face him when he called. "Sar? You know, next time, you should get him a nice white horse instead of a kitten. It'll help when he decides to play the white knight."

Sara found Greg next, who refused to look at her when she came into the room. "I don't have your results yet. I told you I'd page you."

"I'm not here for the results. I'm here to talk."

"Talk?" Greg's head bobbed up from the microscope and he scanned the halls of the lab nervously. "About what?"

"I heard. About Warrick's little smackdown." Stepping behind the counter, Sara laid her hand on Greg's arm. "Look, I appreciate him trying to look out for me, and I appreciate you backing off a little bit, but what I really need is for people to treat me like normal. This walking around me on eggshells is just a reminder."

He gave her a measured look that showed just how much he had matured over the last few years working there, and then his goofy smile returned. "So it's open season on you?"

"Um, I wouldn't go that far."

"Yeah, cuz you still got all those mad boxing skilz."

When Sara finally caught up with Warrick in the locker room, she paused for a moment after she had slipped through the door to admire the muscles in his shoulders as he pulled on a fresh blue button down. "My white knight, preparing for another battle? Going to tell Hodges to be nice to me?"

He hung his head, a guilty smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, "Who ratted me out?" Sara stepped up, resting her hand on his back to take the sting from her barbed comments, and her prepared speech flew out of her mind as she felt the heat radiating from his body. Surprised by her reaction to such a simple gesture, she had to restrain herself from running her hand up to his shoulders, and she jerked her hand back suddenly, as if burned.

"Like I'm not going to notice Greg and Nick not busting me for that chocolate syrup comment. Picture that," she said in perfect imitation of Warrick's delivery of the phrase before her tone turned serious. "Warrick, I appreciate everything, you're doing for me, I really do, but maybe me staying with you is a bad idea." She sank onto the bench, her shoulders sagging. "I don't want you to feel like you have to take care of me."

"Why? Because you don't want to be taken care of?"

"I, I'm not used to it." She slid around so he couldn't see her face, staring down the empty row of lockers. "I shouldn't get used to it." When his hand came to rest on her shoulder and his thumb began a soothing massage of the tension in her shoulders, she let her eyes close briefly and she felt the stress drain out of her.

"Well, get used to it."

xxx

They settled into a routine of a sort: Sara would run or go to the gym as soon as she got off work, the physical exhaustion slowly working the tightness out of her muscles, and when she got home and headed for her own shower, Warrick stretched his repertoire of vegetarian dishes. A few times Sara had caught him playing the piano that took up much of the living room, but he always stopped as soon as she came in the door so she only got to hear a few notes. Then, since she slept less than Warrick, he awoke to breakfast most afternoons, the smell of cinnamon rolls a much more pleasant way to wake than his alarm. Sara's attempts to find the perfect house seemed to be an exercise in futility, as most of the houses on the market were new, cheap beige boxes, and the older, smaller homes in neighborhoods like Warrick's were either in disrepair or horribly overprices. Sara wouldn't admit, even to herself, that there may have been other reasons for her pickiness besides wanting the perfect house with hardwood floors and a large master bedroom.

Throwing down yet another realtor's brochure in disgust, Sara collapsed back against the cushions of the couch. "I told this guy that I didn't want any new constructions and he sends me material on a gated community. A gated community! Do you think he heard a word I said?" she grouched while stretching her arms out, inadvertently hiking up her t-shirt.

Warrick looked at her over the top of the Sports section. "Maybe he's trying to suggest you need to be caged. Her cocked eyebrow told him exactly what she thought of his sense of humor.

"Maybe I should just give up and get an apartment," she sighed.

"Why? You have a place to stay here."

"Yeah, but…"

"But nothing. I like having you here. If it makes you feel any better, you can pay a little for rent," he suggested, since she had been making comments about money and freeloading lately. When she brightened up, he gave her a warning look. "I said a little."

"Thanks. It is nice not to have to try to restock an entire apartment of furniture and stuff right now. This feels homey."

Warrick noticed how stiff she looked sitting on the couch, and shook his head. "Every morning you run and don't go the gym, you are so fidgety and tense. Why is that?"

"I store tension in my shoulders, and a heavy bag workout is the best way for me to work it out. So on days when I don't get an upper-body workout in, then…"

Warrick cracked his knuckles and grinned at her. "I know just the thing." When she looked at him questioningly, he grabbed her hand and pulled her up and out into the garage. He had Sara help him move some boxes, finally exposing a heavy bag hanging from the beams. When he pulled out his own gloves and wraps, Sara wiggled her eyebrows before disappearing to find her gym bag.