Disclaimer: I don't own them.
A/N: Sorry it's been so long to update, and that it's short. Hopefully the next one won't take so long...
Chapter Nine:
The next night at the lab, Nick was strangely observant… as if he'd seen something in Sara's behavior that worried him. Perhaps this increased attention was the reason Sara was so jumpy—she dropped the coffee pot when Greg bounded into the break room, excited—almost skipping to tell Nick about his date the night before. Unluckily, it fell all across the khaki jacket she'd thrown over her shirt, but not on the shirt itself.
"Oh shit, now I have to go change… I don't think I have another spare shirt in my locker." In truth, she didn't know if she had a long-sleeved shirt. …Would she have enough time to stop at home before the beginning of shift?
Nick wrinkled his brow, moving over to her. "Sara, not a drop got on the shirt you're wearing under it… just take the jacket off."
But of course, that was the last thing she could do. She grumbled, trying to come up with an excuse, but Nick was already behind her, pulling it off her shoulders. "Don't be bashful Sara, it's not like we haven't seen you in tank tops in the locker room…" and when the jacket slid from her arms, he looked confused. "You're not even wearing a tank top… why didn't you want to—"
"Hey Sara," Greg cut in from the table, his mouth full of chips from the bag he'd opened, once realizing that no one was going to listen about his date at the moment. She looked at him in relief, waiting for him to change the subject, her arms crossing over her chest in an attempt to hide the bruising on her wrists… it was darker now than it had ever been, and several shades of purple.
"What's that on your wrists?" He asked it offhandedly—he had no idea what he was asking. Sara could literally have killed him… She closed her eyes, half in resignation and half in utter irritation. Could she not hide a damn thing in this lab? And Nick, as expected, jumped on Greg's words.
"Your wrists…?" though she tried to bury them further against her chest, he pulled them out decisively, and inspected the bruises with narrowed eyebrows. "Sara… who… who did this to you?"
She pulled them from his grasp defensively. "No one, Nick. It's nothing."
He caught them again and pulled her back to him. "It isn't nothing, Sara… haven't we seen enough battered women to know exactly how this is going to end?"
She glared at him—she knew better than he did how domestic abuse ended, and she hadn't needed the job or the victims to show her that. "Nick, I did it to myself, okay? …Drop it." And she pulled her hands from his large, calloused ones, as if to exemplify what dropping entailed. Those dark, Texas-sized eyebrows pulled together again.
"How did you cause bruises from your wrists being bound by yourself? I'm not stupid, Sara; I know what happened here."
"No, Nicky, you don't…" He argued again, but she didn't hear it—she was becoming more and more agitated at having this conversation in the lab—Grissom would be coming down with assignments soon, and the last thing she wanted him to hear was—
"What's going on here?" She closed her eyes again—resignation and disbelief. Of course Grissom was here now. During this. Of course.
And, of course, Nick spoke up, leaving her no room to defend herself—to explain how she had gotten into this position, with her hands attempting to bury themselves in her chest, and Nick hovering over her, lecturing her on her own self-worth.
"Sara's got bruises on her wrists… bad ones, Griss. And… I just remembered! She's got scratches on her back, like someone dragged her across concrete… She told me she'd just fallen in the shower but… but I think we all know you don't get marks like these from accidents or… or… just normal sex. Some asshole is hurting her, and she's defending him! …I just don't know why," he adds, turning back to me. "You're so much smarter… stronger than that, Sara. Why are you letting him do this to you?"
She blushed, and stuttered, and her eyes tried to both meet and avoid Grissom's at the same time, ending up focusing on one of the buttons on his shirt. She draws in a deep breath. "No one is hurting me, Nick. And if you don't stop talking about what is very clearly evidence of my love life, I'm going to file a sexual harassment charge. Okay?"
He looks taken aback… hurt, even. Sara feels guilty, but she can't back down—her relationship with Gil is fragile enough without any added stress—whether it be from Nick's accusations, or simply the fact that they were already close to being discovered, and their affair had hardly begun. …She certainly needed more time with him, uninterrupted and unchallenged, so he could make up his mind. If he made it up now, he would simply choose to end things… to keep living without her. She couldn't allow it.
"…Fine. …I guess I wasn't aware that abuse counted as 'evidence of your love life.'" He turns from her, his eyes dark—to hide the hurt, she imagined—and slumps into a chair.
She swallows hard, forcing herself to look up… to look at Grissom… but he doesn't meet her gaze. He turns to the room at large, which now includes Catherine and Warrick, though Sara didn't know when they'd come in… and begins to hand out assignments, as if nothing had happened.
It is with extreme effort that she blinks back her tears and takes the assignment slip he gives her—a 419 with Warrick—and leaves the break room and the awkward silence behind her.
Warrick tried to talk to her, on the way back from the scene—She had taken perimeter, because she knew she was going to be distracted… She didn't want to be the lead on this one. And after hours of forcing herself not to think about what Grissom was doing or thinking, because she needed to focus, she really didn't want to hear his words, even if he wasn't being half as pushy as Nick had been.
"…He just cares about you, Sar'… We all do. He just doesn't know when to stop."
Sara nods. "I'm not mad at Nicky, I just… I needed him to stop. He didn't… need to say those things… in front of everyone."
He nods, and there are several minutes of silence before he tries to talk to her again.
"So… how did you get the bruises? I mean, if… if no one was hurting you…"
She closes my eyes in frustration. "It's not really anyone else's business how I got them…"
"Well… I worry about you too, Sara. Please just… promise me that, if it is anything like… like what Nick said… that you've either already ended it, or you're going to…"
They open once more, and she gives me a lack luster smile, and responds in her most patient voice, "I'll do you one better, War'… I promise that it isn't even close to what Nick was suggesting."
He gives her an appraising look. "Promise?"
She nods, glad to see that he believes her. "Cross my heart."