DISCLAIMER: Nothing that you recognise belongs to me.
Nick woke alone in bed. He remembered even before he was fully awake that Sara had definitely been there when he'd fallen asleep. She'd been crying, and he'd been holding her and trying to make it all go away and just feeling absolutely, completely, useless. She'd seemed so lost, these few days, and when she got lost she was completely erratic. Nick liked knowing where Sara was, because it meant she probably wasn't doing something stupid.
He stretched out a hand to where she'd been. Cold.
Nick usually liked to take a few minutes to wake up properly. He liked lying in bed, adjusting his mind, planning his "day". This time he skipped that, forced himself straight into awake-and-thinking mode, and got up.
Sara was sitting at the dining table with her head pillowed on one arm. A couple of pieces of paper were sticking out from underneath her, covered in what looked like her own peculiar brand of shorthand. Lying on top of them was a pen, the end of which Nick was fairly sure hadn't been chewed the last time he saw it. A coffee mug lay on its side, and the last dregs of coffee had dripped onto the table.
Nick righted the mug and looked carefully at Sara. She was clearly fast asleep - had she been dozing, she'd have sat bolt upright the second he came in and pretended that she was fine, that she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.
She'd have pretended that she wasn't obsessed with the Brenda Collins case, that the "BrCl" which appeared more often than anything else on her pieces of paper didn't stand for Brenda Collins.
But Nick knew her.
So he watched her, just for a few moments. Half of him wanted to pick up her up, make her hot chocolate, take her to bed and tuck her in and whisper sweet nothings to her until she fell asleep.
The part of himself that he didn't particularly like wanted to leave her to her own devices, and to run off to find his own form of oblivion.
But Nick Stokes didn't do things like that.
He took the middle road, the sensible, average, respectable path. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Sara. Wake up." When she stirred and blinked and looked up at him with bleary eyes, he picked up her coffee mug and said, "I'll make you some fresh coffee."
"You with me, man?"
Nick had the feeling Warrick had asked him the question more than once. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't sleep well."
"Everything okay with you?"
Not for the first time, Nick had the desire to just tell Warrick everything. How he'd slept with Sara for the first time nearly a year ago, after a case he'd worked, unusually, with her, because swing shift had been short handed. It had been one of those nightmare cases - child abuse, the sort of thing they both loathed. When the case was over, when they'd got justice for little Amelia Harvey, they'd gone out for a drink and one drink became several, and next thing he knew he was kissing her, and she tasted like beer and peanuts and he felt like he could get drunk on Sara Sidle faster than he could on alcohol. He took her home, and her skin was warm and smooth under his hands and she was just as desperate, just as eager as he was.
He wondered what Warrick would say, if Nick said he'd been sleeping with Sara for almost a year, and that he loved her in a way he didn't understand and couldn't explain to anyone else.
If he said all that, then he could tell Warrick how cut up Sara was over the Brenda Collins case, how she wasn't eating properly, how she wouldn't talk about what was bothering her but just wanted to be held. Maybe he could even tell Warrick how much it bothered him and how scared he was for her.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."
At least it was a slow shift.
"Nick."
Nick had been on his way out to the parking lot. His shift, after interminably long hours, was over, and he was going to make waffles, just in case Sara turned up for breakfast. Hearing his name he turned and saw Greg Sanders in the door of the lab. "Hey Greg."
"You and Sara are friends, right?"
Nick stared at Greg.
"Well, can you make her see sense?"
Nick considered this. "Probably not," he said, aware that Greg looked nervous. "What's she up to now?"
"You know we're working the Brenda Collins murder?"
"Yes." He definitely knew they were working the Brenda Collins murder.
"Well, Sara met these two homeless girls who were friends of Brenda's. She thinks they've got some information about Brenda's death that they're not giving her, and she wants to go to that old factory where the homeless kids hang out. At night. By herself. And, I don't know, it just seems really stupid to me. I told her that, and now she's pissed off at me and won't listen to anything I say."
Nick sighed. At least it wasn't going to be night again for a while - maybe long enough to hammer the fact that this was an idiotic idea into her head, at least long enough to track her down and glue himself to her side to stop her doing anything stupid. "Thanks, Greg. I'll talk to her."
"Rather you than me."
Nick managed a smile. "I'm used to Sara's moods."
"Rather you than me," Greg said again.
Nick wasn't surprised when she didn't turn up at his place. He also wasn't surprised when she answered neither her home phone nor her cell, and didn't return his calls.
He wasn't surprised - but he was worried, frustrated, and angry. Sometimes it seemed like he was putting everything he had into Sara, and she took whatever she wanted and ran. He wondered, occasionally, as he lay awake in bed, what would happen if he started being like Sara. They'd both probably self-destruct.
Because he was Nick Stokes, he didn't give up on her. He went over to her apartment, let himself in, and looked around. Nothing. If she'd been there recently, it wasn't obvious. He checked parks and casinos, bars and cafes all over the city. He went to the Episcopalian church's drop-in centre and asked if they'd seen Sara. He sauntered past the old factory that was supposed to be home to the street kids.
Nothing.
About one thirty pm, when he should have been asleep in bed, Nick found himself in a dingy little bar somewhere off the Strip, nursing a glass of beer. If he wasn't careful, he was going to turn into Sara, depending on alcohol to numb the pain. Maybe it'd be easier.
Maybe it'd hurt her just as much as she was hurting him, right now.
Logic told him that she was off somewhere being Sara, so wrapped up in whatever was going on in her head that she couldn't think straight, wasn't thinking about him or anything other than solving Brenda Collins's murder and probably rescuing those two girls into the bargain. It was unlikely she was hurt, or in hospital, or lying dead in a ditch somewhere, but -
Nick finished off his glass. She was fine. She had to be fine. She was just being Sara, beautiful hopeless Sara who could be so damn selfish sometimes.
He didn't say no when the bartender offered him a refill.
While his glass was being refilled, Nick pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He open the phone book and scrolled right down to the last name on the list: Warrick. He stared at it; black letters highlighted against a glowing yellow background. He could push call right now and talk to Warrick, tell him the whole story, talk to someone human, someone who'd listen, someone who cared. Someone who'd tell him straight up that he was a stupid idiot.
But he wouldn't. Not yet.
He slapped some cash down on the bar and left before he could be tempted by his second beer.
He found Sara at Diablo Canyon, surprisingly enough. He'd walked out of the bar and just started driving, pretending he wasn't going out to the desert until it was too late to deny it. He liked the harsh landscape of Diablo Canyon: he was in a mood for seeing the unremitting cruelty of nature, the stark sand, the rocks, the wilderness.
Sara was out there, sitting in her Denali, staring into space.
Nick swallowed the urge to punch something (not Sara, never Sara), or shout at her. He swallowed his emotions, tried to make his voice level, and opened the passenger's side door.
He was a little gratified to see that Sara jumped. "Nick! What are you doing out here?"
He was tempted to say looking for you. "Thinking."
"Oh."
"What the hell are you playing at, Sara?" He'd expected his voice to be angry, but it was more tired, weary, old.
"What do you mean?" She had the grace to look, at least, a little guilty.
Nick pulled her cell phone from the glove box where she always kept it. "Six missed calls, Sara. All from me. I called you at home, six times. I went round there. I've searched the city for you. I just wish you'd tell me when you're going to disappear."
Sara sighed, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry, okay? I just had to get away."
"Just - I worry about you, Sara."
"You don't trust me."
"No. I don't." Nick shook his head. "You're not trustworthy, that's why. Would you like to tell me what you're planning on doing tonight?"
Sara glared at him. "You've been talking to Greg. You don't need to check up on me, Nick!"
"Greg came looking for me, actually, because he's just as worried about you as I am. Can't you tell when people care about you?" It probably wasn't staring out at the desert that was making Nick's eyes water. "Tell me what you're going to do tonight."
"I'm just going to go talk to a couple of Brenda's friends. That's it."
"Then I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not."
Nick drew a deep breath. "If you don't take me with you, I'll go to Grissom and Ecklie and the Sheriff and tell them that you're unfit to work at the moment." As he spoke, he watched her face. Didn't she realise that this was hurting him just as much as it was hurting her?
"You wouldn't."
"I would, Sara, because you're scaring me, okay? You're not acting sensibly or rationally or even professionally. You shouldn't even be working this damn case. I'm not asking you not to go, I am just asking you to take me with you."
They watched each other in silence. "Fine," Sara said, eventually. "Fine. If it'll get you off my back, you can come."
TBC...