Title: Slow Shift
Author: DarkDreamer56
Archive: If you want it, ask please!
Rating: T
Pairing: N/S
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd be getting up for a much more exciting job in the morning…
Spoilers: nothing stands out as being particularly spoilery, as long as you've seen through "Grave Danger"

A/N: This is in response to a challenge that Julie issued, probably months ago. I really liked the pieces of it, but then work got crazy and I didn't get a chance to finish what I started. And then I found it again, and decided to finish it up. Hope you enjoy!

Sara stumbled somewhat blearily into the break room, desperately in search of coffee or something else to keep her awake. The shift had been uncharacteristically quiet, and Grissom had sent himself and Warrick out on the only call to come in, mostly to get out of doing his paperwork. Nick was running prints off of a cold case, Catherine had the night off, and Greg had been hiding somewhere in the lab for most of the shift, leaving Sara with most of Grissom's paperwork.

"Last time I do him a favor…" Sara passed Hodges, Archie, and Greg, all seated around the break room table, as she ambled towards the coffee pot. She was muttering under her breath all of the things she was going to do to Grissom once he returned, and almost missed Greg's declaration.

"Joe DiMaggio."

Sara gave him a funny look, but soon a yawn overtook her expression.

"You awake there, Sara?" Nick teased from his place on the couch. He chuckled as Sara turned her glare his way before returning her attention to the coffee pot. She tried to keep a smile from overtaking the glare, but she failed horribly.

Sara momentarily registered Hodges calling out, "Joe McCarthy," before she let her thoughts return to the Texan currently occupying the couch.

The two had always had a strong friendship with flirty banter, but things had seemed different between them the past few weeks. The cases they had shared had been daunting and complicated, yet Sara had found herself going home with a smile every day after shift.And she was beginning to suspect that she was having the same affect on Nick. Warrick had even commented that Nick finally seemed to be getting back to himself, and had then thrown a knowing smirk in her direction. Sara was hoping that one of them would gather the courage to finally say something; right now, she was hoping it would be Nick.

"You offering to help me with paperwork, Nick?"

He grinned. "No, I don't believe there was an offer in there anywhere. Too much to do…"

Sara raised her eyebrows, taking in Nick's comfortable appearance on the couch with his own cup of coffee. "I can see that."

Nick chuckled and shook his head. "I'm taking a break, I'll have you know."

"Richard Nixon," Archie interrupted, garnering the room's attention.

"Studebaker," Hodges continued on as Sara shot Nick a quizzical look, but Nick just continued to laugh.

"Man Archie, that took way too long. Alright…television?"

"They've been doing this since I came in," Nick informed Sara, taking a sip from his coffee.

"North Korea?" Archie called through a mouthful of popcorn.

"Near as I can tell, they're going through all of the lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire."

Sara leaned against the counter, wrapping her hands around the coffee mug. "I suppose it's better than the light saber fight they had in the morgue hallway last week."

"Or prank calling Super Dave."

"Hey, that wasn't us, that was Henry from Trace," Greg chimed in. "South Korea. We're more mature than that."

"Says the guy with the pleather couch and the green velvet picture framed on his living room wall," Sara shot back.

"Vintage is cool. And he's had that since college," Archie defended.

"Sorry, pleather and green velvet were never cool. And having it in college is no excuse." Nick chuckled again and set his coffee on the table in front of the couch.

Hodges added, "Don't forget, he was the one that spent an entire night combining people's names into those god-awful nicknames. The epitome of uncool. How the hell did you come up with Sandles?"

Greg leaned back, linking his fingers behind his head and throwing a grin in Sara's direction. "Sidle…Sanders…Sandles. It works." He waggled his eyebrows for affect. "What do you say, Sara? You, me…Nick can double with Sofia, he's been trying to hide a thing for her for weeks…"

Sara nearly choked on her coffee. Her eyes flew to Nick whose own eyes were wide as he glared at Greg.

"What, it's not like it's not obvious…you haven't been able to tear yourself away from the lab whenever you've been working with her lately. All that overtime, you're just finding excuses to get her to notice you. You should just ask her out man."

So that was the reason Nick had seemed so happy to work with her the past couple weeks. She had been paired with Sofia and Nick for a couple cases, and Nick had even offered to help her on a couple that she had been working solo on. Sofia had been the detective on those cases. It wasn't her; it was Sofia. Somehow, this hurt more than when she found out Grissom had taken Sofia out to dinner. She felt her face heating up, and not wanting to explain it to Nick, let alone explain it in front of Greg, Archie, and Hodges, she quickly dumped the rest of her coffee into the sink and hurried towards the door.

"Right reasoning…but wrong woman there Sanders…" Sara heard Hodges announce as she exited the room, but Sara was inclined to agree with Greg. She had to have been suffering from temporary insanity to think that there was anything more between her and Nick than friendship. Sofia was much more his type than Sara ever could be. Hopefully, she could just go back to the mountain of paperwork waiting for her, and forget that she ever had more than friendly feelings for Nicholas Stokes.

Unfortunately Sara wasn't paying attention to where she was walking as she was absolving to bury her feelings for a certain charming coworker, and she ran smack into someone else about halfway down the hall.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't watching…" Sara froze as she looked up, directly into the face of Hank Peddigrew. He looked just as surprised to see her, they had successfully avoided speaking to each other since Sara had found out about Elaine.

"Sara…hey. How are you doing?"

She willed a smile on her face. "I, uh…I'm good. How about you?"

"Uh, I'm good…" He trailed off awkwardly, looking around at everything but her.

When the floor refused to open up and swallow her whole, Sara realized she would have to extricate herself from the situation or continue the staring contest with Hank in the hallway.

"Uh, it was, uh, nice to see you, but I should really get back to…"

"Oh, right, right. Bet you've got a hot case…Well you take care."

Sara forced another smile on to her face and then quickly made her way to the office at the end of the hall where she had been working, trying to escape before someone else showed up. With her luck, Lady Heather would appear in the hall next. She dropped down into the chair and sighed. It was quickly spiraling into an awful shift, and there wasn't even a case to work on.

It took awhile, but eventually Sara willed her thoughts away from Nick, Hank, and every other guy that had disappointed her, and back to the case files she was reviewing. She wasn't exactly sure how long she was lost in the paperwork, but she didn't stop pushing through it until she heard a knock on the doorframe.

Looking up, her eyes widened as she noticed Nick, standing somewhat awkwardly in the doorway. "I got a hit off of the prints form that traffic cone…looks like it's the brother-in-law, so I figured I'd give you a hand with that paperwork until, um, Sofia tracks him down."

Both averted their eyes from the other's gaze at mention of the blond detective. Nick settled himself in the chair across from her and reached for a stack of files.

"You missed Greg's new ring tone. His phone went off right after you, uh, left," Nick called quietly after a few minutes of silence.

Sara responded more to ward off the silence than any actual interest in Greg's ring tones. "Really? I can't imagine what he picked this time, it's pretty hard to top New Kids on the Block for the annoying factor."

"Oh, I'm sure that if you spend a shift with him, Laffy Taffy will reach the same level of annoying. Still, not as funny as your ring tone a couple weeks ago." Nick chuckled at the memory, and Sara rolled her eyes even as she could feel her cheeks reddening.

"Hey, I never listened to it before I downloaded it, how was I supposed to know that the only part of the song they play is I die without you, over and over." It didn't help that it had been Hodges calling her to tell her that the analysis of the trace materials found on their vic was done, and Nick teased her mercilessly for the rest of their shift.

"Still, you gotta admit, it was pretty funny." Sara's glare assured him that she didn't, but the air was a little less thick with tension as they went back to the case files.

Until Nick opened his mouth again, of course.

He cleared his throat nervously, bringing Sara's thoughts away from the paperwork.

"Sara, you wouldn't consider…I mean, you wouldn't ever take Hank back, right?" Sara's look must have reflected the sheer shock that she felt, because Nick continued on. "It's just, I ran into him in the hallway earlier, and he gave me the impression that he…well, that he wanted you back. But he kinda froze when he saw you…"

"What, you want us to double with you and Sofia?" The words flew out of Sara's mouth before she could even process thinking them. Part of her was flustered, having this conversation with Nick, and part of her was surprised that Hank thought that she would ever take him back. The temporary short circuiting of her brain allowed the comment to slip out unfiltered.

When she looked up, Nick was staring at the paperwork in front of her. His face was a bit red, though Sara was pretty sure hers was too. He shot her a nervous smile before his eyes returned to his own stack of files.

"You deserve a hell of a lot better than Hank…" His voice was low, and his eyes never left the open file in front of him, but there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice.

"Nick…I'd never take him back. But thanks."

Nick sighed, his pen tapping against the table top, something that normally grated on Sara's nerves, but this time didn't seem to bother her. "You know…Greg can be a little dense sometimes…I don't have a thing for Sofia."

Sara wanted to believe it was true, but she just figured Nick was trying to make her feel better. He had probably figured out why she had left the break room so quickly. Sara hadn't exactly been hiding her attraction to him for the past few weeks, thinking it was mutual, and he had probably picked up on it. "Nick, you don't have to, it's okay…"

"Sara." She found herself looking up at him, his eyes meeting hers for the first time since she had left the break room. "Sofia isn't the reason I've been putting in so much overtime." All trace of nervousness had left his eyes, leaving Sara a little nervous.

"What, are you saving up for a new car?" The look on his face implied that he wasn't.

Sara was sure her eyes were as wide as they could get without her eyebrows disappearing somewhere on the top of her skull as Nick smirked back at her. "Looks like Greg isn't the only one around here that can be a little dense. You know, for once, Hodges actually had the right idea…"

Sara was momentarily flustered, barely able to string a coherent sentence together. "I thought you, I mean things were different…but then Greg said, and it made sense…" Alright, apparently she couldn't string a coherent sentence together, but Nick seemed to get the general idea.

"Sara, Sofia's nice…but she's not you." Nick smiled, cocking his head to the side as Sara blushed. "And I'd never…look, I know we've flirted for years, but things have been a little more serious lately, haven't they? I'm not Hank…and I'm not Grissom. I'm not that guy, the one who starts something and then leaves you hanging. Yeah, it took awhile to get up the nerve to tell you, but I have planned on it the whole time…just wasn't planning on it in the middle of shift at the lab."

During his confession, Nick's hand crept across the stack of files, tentatively grazing Sara's, before entwining his fingers with hers. Sara didn't trust herself to speak just yet, so she just smiled back at him, squeezing his hand gently in encouragement. The way Nick was grinning at her told her he was sincere, and she felt like an idiot for doubting him.

"So Sara, what do you think? You want to see what could happen between us?" His eyes were earnest as he stared back at her, awaiting her answer.

This time, her voice didn't fail her. "Yeah Nick, I'd really like that."

Sara knew that they were both grinning at each other like fools, and that if anyone walked by the door to the office they were occupying, they would certainly be confused. Well, at least Greg would be, considering everyone else had probably seen right through the both of them. Either way, neither of them seemed capable of wiping the smiles off of their faces as they stared at each other.

"How about we start this off right? I have it on good authority that we're both off tonight, so what do you say to dinner out by Calville Bay?"

"Sounds perfect."

They did eventually get back to work, but every once in awhile, one would catch the other staring at them out of the corner of their eye and smile. Sara was trying hard to concentrate on the files in front of her, but in her head, she kept mentally going through all of the dresses in her closet and wondering if she would get the chance to run her fingers through his hair at some point during the night. Nick's hair had gone through some major transformations since the buzz cut last year, a look which Sara had had a sort of fondness for, but she was definitely enjoying this shaggier look a lot more than the mustache he had been sporting a few months earlier.

Finally, the paperwork was done, and Nick and Sara dropped it off on Grissom's desk before heading into the locker room and gathering up their stuff. Sara was surprised when Nick reached for her hand.

"You don't want to hide this, do you?" Nick's brow was furrowed as he started to release her hand.

A part of Sara was scared, wanting to see where things would go between them before revealing everything to their coworkers and friends, but the larger part of her didn't want to start keeping secrets and hiding things while they were starting a relationship, so she refused to let go of his hand. Nick grinned and squeezed her hand as they exited the locker room and headed out towards the parking lot. They would take the ribbing from their friends, and whatever consequences came with dating someone on the same shift.

"Is eight okay? It'll probably be easier to get a later reservation," Nick reasoned, "and then we can check out the marina or something…"

"Well well, looks like Stokes finally got up the nerve…"

Nick chuckled at the approaching figure. "Shibley, you're just jealous…"

Sara couldn't help but smile at their exchange. She didn't know Shibley very well, but he had been training for a CSI position when Sara had first arrived in Vegas, and was on graveyard for a couple months before he was transferred to Days. She hadn't seen much of him after that, as Dayshift and Graveyard tried to avoid each other, but he had been one of the few to offer help when Nick was out on medical leave. Sara had worked a couple scenes with him, and had noticed that he'd come a long way since needing to rush out of the house for air during the Collins' house walk through so many years earlier.

"Can I assume from the grins that this is a fairly recent thing?" Shibley quirked an eyebrow as Nick and Sara exchanged sheepish looks. Apparently it was a good thing they weren't going to hide it, because they wouldn't have gotten very far.

"Gee Shibley, with those instincts there, you should really look into becoming a CSI…"

Shibley laughed and shook his head. "Hearts are breaking all over the lab, and they don't even know why…has anyone broken the news to Sanders yet?"

Sara shook her head. "We, uh, haven't gotten that far yet, so…"

"Promise he won't hear it from me." Shibley waved and headed into the lab.

Sara and Nick crossed the parking lot, still holding hands. The Vegas sun was raising the temperature even at seven in the morning, and Sara was looking forward to crawling into bed and anticipating her date with Nick that night. Though Shibley had brought up a good point. "I guess someone's gonna have to tell Greg that he won't be getting that double date after all…" Preferably before the next shift, as she was sure news would spread like wildfire around the lab. She knew Greg would be happy for the two of them, but he would be hurt if he didn't actually get the news from Nick or Sara themselves. That went for the whole team.

Nick grinned. "Oh, I don't know, we could still double with him…as long as I'm the only one kissing you goodnight afterwards."

Nick squeezed her hand one more time, and then reluctantly let go, heading to his own rig after promising to call her once he got some sleep. Sara stood next to her Denali for a few moments before shaking herself out of the daze and climbing into the driver's seat.

She'd definitely be looking forward to that first goodnight kiss.

FIN.

A/N: I actually downloaded that ringtone (it's Finale B from "Rent"), and I can vouch for the weird looks when you're phone suddenly starts playing I die without you over and over. Taught me to listen before downloading. And even though Hodges is mostly human-like in this one, he still had to be snarky, because that's why we love him. I've been watching some of the episodes from Season 1 recently, and Shibley stood out to me because they haven't often shown other CSI's working on Graveyard. He was in a couple of episodes, and then kind of disappeared. Hope you enjoyed, I'm off to work on the next challenge!