Falls between chapter three and the epilogue of Ducks in a Row. I guess it's an outtake, then. Set three weeks before the wedding.
……
Sara paced around her living room, glancing at the clock.
She still had another hour and a half before Greg would finish up with the DNA samples with Warrick and Grissom's case, there had been a lot to identify and process at the messy crime scene, so much that Greg had to put a hold on everyone else's case to keep the samples from the family homicide separate from all the other cases. That gave her roughly two hours.
Oh god.
The last two minutes and forty five seconds had passed by excruciatingly slowly. She stopped pacing, for fear of wearing a track in the carpet, and returned to the bathroom. She perched herself on the back of the toilet, grabbing Greg's sweatshirt from it's hook next to the shower, and pulled it over her head. She got a whiff of the scent that distinctly belonged to her fiancee, the crisp bite of ivory soap, a whisper of sweat, a touch of the chamomile shampoo that was on the side of the tub, and the unmistakable aroma of 'Mountain Breeze' Degree that sat on his shelf in her medicine cabinet. To her left was the sink, and on the counter beside it was a little strip of plastic.
She was late. Three weeks late. At first she was in denial about it, chocking it up to stress, or her sometimes poor mathematical skills. But she wasn't overly stressed, and she minored in math at Harvard. She had cried watching a PBS commercial about eating dinner together as a family, and just today she had fought off a craving for a hamburger, despite being a vegetarian for 8 years now. Something was wrong, and she was going to rule out the scary life changing possibilities first. It was probably too late for that.
Oh god.
She peered over at the indicator window on the top of the plastic tester. Two, dark, thick, blue lines stared back at her. She blinked, rubbing her eyes childishly with the fraying cuff of Greg's sweatshirt, and looked again. Still sitting on the back of the toilet, still holding a pregnancy test, still two lines, still, well, pregnant.
Oh god.
She tossed the offending tester into the bowl of the sink, and climbed down from her perch, approaching the full length mirror suspended on the back of the bathroom door. She didn't think she looked pregnant, she looked the same as she did this morning… however, this morning, she guessed, she was pregnant as well. Sara lifted up the oversized, overused hoodie's front, revealing her abdomen. It didn't look pregnant. She turned to the side slowly. Nope, no swelling. She dropped the front of the hoodie, and turned from the mirror. Pregnant. She was, they were pregnant.
Greg.
He didn't know. She needed to tell him. She hurried into the living room, and snatched her cell phone from the coffee table, dialing 6 on the speed dial and holding her ear up to the receiver. After the second ring, Greg's voice was in her ear.
"Sanders." She froze. She wasn't thinking, she needed to calm down. She needed to respond.
"Hi."
"Hey, I've just about cleared up this catastrophe they are calling the DNA lab, I'll be over in a little while, ok?" Greg hadn't noticed the hesitancy in her voice.
"Umm, ok." Oh god, awkward pause.
"Sara, are you alright?"
"Yeah, fine."
"Liar." Oh no. This was a bad idea, she shouldn't be telling him over the phone, what was she thinking. "Are you feeling well?"
"Umm, yeah, I'm fine, just, umm. Just come home when you are done, ok?"
"I always do, love."
"Ok. Well, I'll be here. At home."
"Alright." Greg took the phone away from his ear for a moment, staring at it curiously, before putting it back to his ear. "I'll see you in a little while? Bout an hour?"
"Ok."
"Alright."
"Ok."
"I have to finish up, otherwise I'll never get home."
"Right, sorry, see you in about an hour, then. Je t'aime."
"Je t'aime toujours." She snapped the phone shut. What the hell was she thinking.
………
"Je t'aime toujours." Greg snapped the phone shut, looking at it like it may bite him before slipping it back in it's holder. Nick stood in front of him, case file open. He had been interrupted by Sara's call, and hadn't moved. "That was weird."
"What was weird?" Nick closed the file and leaned conspiratorially over the DNA counter. "What did she say?"
"Something's up with her. I don't know. She told me to come home after I was done here."
"Don't you do that anyways?"
"Well, yeah, but she's never called me to tell me to before."
"Girls, man."
"Yeah. I don't know. She's never been, well, girly." Greg shrugged, focusing back on the epithelials on the slide in the microscope. "Definitely weird. Weird like your suspects DNA, look at this."
………
Sara was going mad. This was ridiculous. She came to stand in front of the full length mirror again, and lifted the front of the sweatshirt, inspecting her belly. Still nothing. She shook her head, she was being irrational. It had only been a few minutes. Greg was definitely not going to look at her and immediately come to the conclusion that they were going to have a baby. She would have to tell him.
She continued to hold up the bottom of the sweatshirt, and placed a hand gently on her abdomen, afraid to touch it. She traced nonsense patterns an inch our so below her belly button, applying almost no pressure. She left the mirror, and went to the living room, to sit on the couch. Sara slouched on the couch, to get a better view of her stomach. Was there really a baby in there? The tester had said that there was, but it didn't feel any different. This was ridiculous. She frowned at her smooth plane of skin, and tried looking at it from a different angle, tilting her head.
"Well, I guess that this is the beginning. Um, I'm your mother. My, um, my name is Sara. Your father, he'll be home soon, his name is Greg." She took a deep breath. "Look, we're getting married. Really. In about three weeks. So you won't have to worry about being born out of wedlock or anything. Completely legitimate. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that I haven't eaten anything in a few hours, and that I laid on my stomach to crawl through a crime scene six hours ago, sorry about that, and that this apartment is too small, and that your dad and I aren't married yet, and that Las Vegas isn't the best city in the world to grow up in, but Warrick did, and he turned out ok, and he didn't have his parents, but you will have both of us, and everything is going to be ok."
……
"Greg?" Sara turned her head slightly, touching her temple to his forehead. They had been curled up amidst her fluffy comforter for a while now, having made their way to bed after watching a mindless movie, and Greg filling her in on the half shift of lab tech gossip she missed earlier in the evening. Greg's slow, even breathing, she had originally thought, would soothe her, and she would be able to drift to sleep without telling him about the baby. However, it was weighing on her mind. Heavily.
The response she received from the sleeping lump beside her was one she had expected.
"Mmmsleepin." He breathed into her shoulder. She pursed her lips anxiously as he snuggled closer to her, pressing the entire length of the front of his body against the back of hers. One of his arms had come to rest under her head like a pillow, but the other tightened its grip on her stomach, making her suddenly remember the test strip and the news. She tapped his arm impatiently, trying to rouse him.
"Greg." She rotated in his firm grip, and rolled on top of him gently. "Gregory." He pushed his wavy bangs out of his eyes. "Greg!"
"Mmmmpht." His expression protested her attempts at waking him up, but his hands slid down along her hips, and came to rest determinedly on the curve of her bottom. She grinned with anticipation of telling him their news, letting his knee wedge it's way between her thighs, parting her legs. "I'm sleeping, Sara."
"Liar."
"I was, then."
"I wanted to tell you something." This of course brought a sleepy grin to his face.
"Let's have it then, Sidle."
"Look at me." He groaned, but opened his eyes slowly.
"I know, I know, you're beautiful. Time for sleep." He tried to roll over, but Sara held him on his back.
"Wait, no I haven't told you yet." She was drumming on his chest, tastefully covered in a faded Stanford tee shirt. "It's really important." She grinned widely at him, and he propped his head up with her pillow to look her straight in the eye.
"Out with it then, woman." Greg looked at her, expectantly, eyelids drooping with sleep, wavy hair all rumpled and everywhere. "In the middle of a sleep cycle, here." Sara pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, and snuggled into the crook of his neck, fingers tangled in his unruly hair. She flicked her tongue out and captured his earlobe between her lips sucking gently like she had the night he had first kissed her. This elicited a soft moan from his throat.
"Gregory."
"Mmmhmm." She kept her whispers close to his ear, mostly because she was too chicken to look him in the eye.
"I'm pregnant." She braced herself, somewhere inside her, despite the glistening diamond on her finger, the Sara she was before Greg Sanders loved her winced, waiting for rejection, and a fist.
Greg felt her tense up, as he processed her words carefully. He ran a gentle hand along her back, moving from her waist to her shoulder, and back again trying to ease her tension before he spoke. Pregnant. She was pregnant. They were pregnant.
Oh god.
They were going to have a baby.
He pressed a chaste kiss to the skin of her neck beside his lips.
"Really?" His voice dropped to that low throaty whisper that had turned her on a few months ago in the layout room. He turned his lips to her ear, smiling against it. "A baby? You and me?" When he finally saw her face, he felt the tension dissipate from her body, her expression softened from preparation for rejection to relief, and that tiny sparkle of happiness that had begun to regularly show in her eyes, and her smile. She nodded, a rosy tint rising in her cheeks, at how silly she had felt, worrying what he would say.
"What do you think?" She pursed her lips together, letting a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. He gently rolled her on her side, and held her jaw carefully, pulling her towards him. Greg kissed her in earnest, delicately telling her that he was grateful she had woken him up, sleep cycle forgotten.
She rolled over, laying on the flat of her back on his other side. She took his fingers from her neck, and pressed a kiss into the palm of his hand, before placing it just below her belly button, on a flat plane of smooth skin. Greg sat up at this, and sat beside her, cross-legged in the dark of the bedroom. He took her hand with his free one, tangling their fingers together and holding them in his lap. He brought his gaze to meet hers, an expression of awe on his face.
"There's a baby in there?" She barely heard his whisper, but nodded, tears welling in her eyes. He turned back to her stomach, lifting his palm, and leaning over her.
"Hello." His breath tickled her abdomen, and she smiled. "I'm your Dad." He pressed a kiss just above the loose elastic of her panties. "I'm your Dad and I love you. Whoever you will be." She giggled as he nuzzled her belly lightly, placing a trail of Eskimo kisses. "And don't worry, I intend to marry your mother."
Sara let him press one last kiss to her middle, before she pulled him up to her, and pressed her own kiss to his lips.
"I love you, Gregory."
"Just when I thought I couldn't love you more, Sara Jane." He pressed a kiss to her lips, and snuggled into her, placing a gently hand to her stomach. "Thank you for making me a daddy." She smiled as he giggled into her shoulder. "Unless, of course, she looks like Nick." Sara laughed, and turned in his arms, snuggling close to his frame.
"Are you happy, Greg?" He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, and settled back into the pillow.
"Elated, Sara Jane. Delirious."
………
this series is set season six, with Greg all grown up. Because GrownUp!Greg is REALLY sexy. And WildAndCrazyLabRat!Greg really really isn't Sara's type, in my head.
I think it's the hair. I fell in love with seasonsix!Greg when bodies in motion aired.
Anyway. More on the way, time is freeing up as the semester is ending…