Sara shifted her weight a little as she pulled back from where she was cuddled up next to Nick on the couch to look into his eyes. "Nick, I really don't want a big wedding." Sara was trying to explain to Nick how his idea of what she wanted and what she actually did want seemed to be two different things. She knew he meant well, but he had a lot to learn about women regardless of how many he had dated.
"You don't?" Nick looked a little surprised. In his mind he had imagined that Sara would want the sort of wedding that all five of his sisters had had. It had never occurred to him that she might want something a little less over the top. He was both relieved and a little disappointed.
A tentative smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "No, I don't." She let out a soft sigh and then reached over and brushed his hair out of his face. "In fact I'd be perfectly happy just eloping like Warrick and Tina did." The type of wedding didn't matter to her as long as at the end of it she was married to Nick.
Nick shot her a doubtful look.
"Ok, not the drive through part of it." Sara smirked a little.
Nick raised an eyebrow at her and cleared his throat. "So you want to elope?" That surprised him a great deal. He had thought that she'd at least want a few friends and family there.
She shook her head and her smirk turned into a smile. "I didn't say that." She studied her hand for a moment, the sparkling of the diamond captivating her attention for a few long moments before she looked up at Nick again this time with a more serious expression. "I just don't see a point of having a big wedding when hardly anyone would be sitting on my side of the aisle." Her voice held a wistful resignation.
It began to dawn on Nick exactly what she was getting at. It had come out rather by accident as they were working a case together around Father's Day and after telling her what he was sending his dad for the occasion, he'd asked her what she was doing for hers. Sara had looked completely stricken, but after a moment she'd whispered to him that her father had died years before. He had dropped the subject then, but on the way back to the lab after they'd finished processing their scene, she'd felt compelled to tell him exactly what had happened and then explained that she had lost touch with her brother after they'd both been put in foster care.
Sara took his silence as a bad sign and felt a surge of doubt; he had a big family and of course he would want a big wedding. "But if you want a big wedding, we can have a big wedding." She would feel like a complete fool, but if it was important to Nick then she would do it. She only hoped that the rest of his family would accept her the way that Natalie and Chelsea had. Even Chelsea's husband Kevin and their kids had really seemed to genuinely like her.
Nick shook his head. "We need to have the kind of wedding that we both want. That's what this is about; it's about us, Sar." He wished that he could go back in time and find some way to wipe out the hell that Sara had experienced in her home growing up and replace it with something a bit more idyllic.
"You really proposed to me, didn't you?" Sara glanced down at her ring again and couldn't stop the grin from spreading across her face as she looked up at Nick.
"Yeah, I did." Nick's grin matched Sara's. "And you said yes." He still thought he was the luckiest man alive that she had said yes and hadn't immediately bolted for his front door.
Sara giggled. "You know we haven't exactly talked about when we should get married." She saw absolutely no reason to wait too long.
"When do you want to get married?" If Nick thought Sara was really interested in eloping, he might consider it, but he also knew that she needed to have a day that was special and where she was the center of attention to look back on, whether she thought so or not.
Sara furrowed her brow as she mulled it over and then a tiny smile began to pull at her lips and a hint of pink flushed her cheeks. "What about Valentine's Day?"
Nick looked a little shocked. "That's only a couple of weeks away." He knew that his sisters had taken at least six months to plan their weddings, he couldn't imagine how you could pull it all together in two weeks, but then again, this was Vegas.
"I know." Sara hoped she wasn't pushing him to tie the knot sooner than he was ready, but he was the one that had proposed to her.
"You're sure?" Nick wasn't against the idea at all, he just wasn't sure that he could get his entire family to show up for a wedding on a Tuesday.
"You think we should wait?" There was an edge of disappointment in her voice as she considered that maybe Nick wasn't as sure about marrying her as he said.
"No." Nick took a deep breath and pulled her closer as they cuddled together on the couch. "I just thought you would have wanted more time to plan that's all." He knew that regardless of the timing, most if not all of his family would rearrange their schedules to make it to his wedding; they'd been after him for years to settle down.
"But if we don't have a big wedding, there isn't much to plan...just the place and what we're going to wear." Sara was blissfully naïve about what was actually involved in planning a wedding.
Nick tried to hold his tongue. "I think it's a little more complicated than that..." He was about to start listing a few things, but thought better of it; there were times when Sara just had to figure it out on her own. "But if that's what you want, that's what we'll do."
"So will Valentine's Day work?" She didn't know why she felt so nervous about setting a date; perhaps it was because she felt a little like she was getting ready to step off of a cliff and had no idea if anything would break her fall.
"I think Valentine's Day is perfect." Nick leaned in and softly kissed her. His voice was a bit husky as he pulled away. "And I think you're perfect." He had a smoldering look in his eyes.
"You're pretty good yourself." Sara could think of no one that she'd rather spend the rest of her life with and she leaned in and gave him a kiss that was a bit longer than the one he'd given her.
Nick was rather encouraged that the DVDs seemed to have been forgotten and he leaned in and kissed her again. Sara seemed perfectly happy to trade slow dizzy kisses with him and as it became clear that neither one of them were putting on the brakes, things started to slowly heat up. A short while later, they were tangled up together on the couch in the middle of a rather heavy make-out session that had a singular destination in mind when both of their cell phones went off.
Nick let out a low curse as he fumbled around to find his phone. "Stokes. Oh, hey, Grissom." He glanced over at Sara who was flushed and who hadn't even made an attempt to reach for her phone and then he realized that even if she tried she'd have difficulty reaching it where it had ended up on the floor under the coffee table. "I thought so." Nick was not thrilled about being called in. "Yeah, she's here...I'll tell her. Yeah, we'll be there as soon as we can." He ended the call and tossed the phone on the floor.
"Work?" Sara sounded disappointed. She and Nick rarely had a night off together and she had really been looking forward to where things had been heading between them. They hadn't planned on waiting this long, but things had just worked out that way.
"Yeah." Nick leaned down and gave her a chaste kiss before resting his forehead against hers with an impish grin on his face. "I guess the naked wedding planning will have to wait until later."
