Sort of a filler chapter, but necessary to move the story along. I hope you like it anyway.

x x x x

Sara moved as slowly as possible, willing herself not to make a sound.

A spring twanged beneath her and she winced, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder.

It was okay, Kirsty hadn't stirred.

Releasing a breath, she made to stand up but to her surprise two arms snaked around her waist.

"Where do you think you're going?" A sultry voice enquired lazily. Sara froze, trying to think up a plausible excuse. Somehow, only one word made it out.

"Coffee." She stuttered, cursing her lack of vocal ability.

Rolling over, but never relinquishing her hold on the brunette, Kirsty grinned up at her playfully.

"Oh you don't need coffee." She teased.

"No?" Sara asked uncertainly, not liking where this was potentially going.

"No, I can wake you up myself."

Yeah, that's what she had been worried about.

Against her every instinct, she allowed Kirsty to tug her back down and reacted tentatively to the kiss pressed against her mouth.

It wasn't that she didn't feel anything for Kirsty anymore; she was still attracted to her on a physical level. But on a more emotional scale, she was struggling to trust the woman.

To her blessed relief, the phone rang.

Ignoring the frustrated sigh from Kirsty, Sara slid out from beneath her and practically long-jumped across the small flat to grab it off the hook.

Kirsty reclined on the mattress, stretching all of her extremities until she was spread-eagled across the entire bed. She could only hear Sara's side of the conversation, but it didn't take a genius to work out who it was.

"You have to go to work." She stated as soon as she heard her girlfriend hang up.

"Yeah, sorry." Sara mumbled, already hunting for some clean clothes to wear. "It shouldn't take more than a few hours." … If she was unlucky, that is.

To her growing surprise, Kirsty took the news surprisingly well. Rolling off the bed, she encased her body in the blanket and shuffled across the floor to wrap Sara in a tight hug from behind.

"Maybe it's not such a bad thing." She hummed, peppering kisses along her slender neck. Sara tensed at the actions, praying that Kirsty didn't notice.

"Oh yeah?" She asked curiously.

"Yeah." Kirsty smiled against her skin. "Well, I might have some things of my own to do today." She explained coyly. "Some ... private things."

Sara could tell from her tone that she was expected to react to this, so she cocked her head to the side in mock curiosity as she began tugging her jeans on.

Taking the bait, Kirsty dragged a hand across her bare back seductively.

"You just make sure you're home by seven." She murmured. "I might have something planned for you."

"Seven." Sara repeated, trying and failing to sound enthused. "Right."

She held up the façade until the dark-skinned woman disappeared into her bathroom and she could finally relax a little.

It had been a relatively calm few weeks since Kirsty's blow-up about Catherine's text message.

Too calm. Something needed to give.

To add to Sara's growing edginess, Kirsty had been unusually nice to her recently. It was either a guilty conscience, she thought to herself, or the other woman was just oblivious to her increasingly evident discomfort.

The more time Sara spent with her girlfriend, the more she began to think Catherine was right about the relationship being doomed. She had convinced herself at first that if Kirsty could get help things would sort themselves out and it would go back to normal; but now she found herself wondering whether she would ever be able to trust the woman properly.

As it was, she flinched every time Kirsty came within arms length of her.

Even intimate moments had her scared stiff. And if she didn't relax soon, Kirsty might start to notice that something was wrong.

Which was precisely why she was not exactly thrilled about these 'plans' for her this evening.

She hadn't told Catherine yet that she was thinking of ending it, although the blonde continued to pester her about it. She made a point of asking at the start of each shift whether everything was okay, which Sara quickly realised was code for 'has she hit you again?'

As much as Catherine's persistence was wearing thin, Sara had to admit she was glad that someone knew. It comforted her slightly to know that if anything did happen, she had someone to call on. Someone to talk to.

And everything else aside, the one benefit of all this was that her and Catherine had become a lot closer in recent weeks. The boys had noticed, of course, but they weren't questioning it. They had no reason to – as long as the girls were getting along, they were happy.

X x x

"Hey Doc." Sara greeted warmly, sidling up to the bench.

"Sara." He nodded. "What can I do for you on this fine evening?"

She smiled fondly at the coroner. She always liked coming in here, if for nothing more than his sweet humour and kindly smile.

"Grissom sent me," she explained her presence. "He wants the Richardson file."

"Ah, of course." Snapping off his gloves, he abandoned his current work-in-progress on the slab and clicked towards his desk.

Sara ambled around the bench, leaning over to peer at the corpse curiously while trying not to touch anything.

"Here you are." The doctor hummed at last, coming over to hand her the folder. She smiled gratefully, instinctively flicking to the first page even though it wasn't her case. It was force of habit in her job to read every results sheet she was handed.

She became so engrossed in it that she didn't notice Albert staring at her with concern in his blue eyes.

"Sara." He said at last, taking a step closer. "Is everything alright?"

She froze, flicking her gaze suspiciously over the top of the paperwork.

"Of course, why wouldn't it be?" She answered as nonchalantly as she could, but her nerves were obvious even to her own ears.

"I don't know." He shrugged. "You just seem quieter than usual."

Snapping the folder shut, she took a deliberate step backwards towards the door.

"I'm fine." She insisted, holding her hands up defensively.

"Sara, you know … whatever's going on, you can talk to us. Everyone here cares about you."

She swallowed around the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat, shaking her head slowly.

"I'm fine." She repeated, waving the folder in the air. "Thanks, for this."

Before he could press the issue further, she spun on her heel and practically fell into the door.

Dave, coming the other way, barely moved out of her way in time as she stumbled past him into the cool air of the corridor.

"Oh, hi … Sara." He frowned, watching her disappear at a fair speed down the hall. "Huh, what's her hurry?"

"I don't know." Doc scowled, making his way back to his dead body. "But I don't like it."

X x x

She managed to get all the way to the locker room without running into anyone else and emitted a relieved sigh to find it empty.

She was getting more and more jumpy around her colleagues with every passing day. She couldn't help getting the feeling that they all knew something; although the logical part of her brain insisted she was just paranoid.

Then again, perhaps she had reason to be.

Checking that she was truly alone, she pulled the note out of her pocket and unfurled it. Her narrowed eyes scanned the text again, even though the image of it was burned into her memory.

It had fallen out of her locker when she arrived at work this afternoon – someone must have shoved it under the door.

It was a small, folded piece of paper with only one word printed in plain black ink.

'DYKE'

It had to have come from someone in the lab, someone who knew which one was her locker.

But who? And why now?

She had almost told Catherine, but decided against it. Though she highly doubted Cath was involved, she couldn't rule out the chance that her supervisor had let slip to someone that she was gay.

And if Cath had any idea who is was, the last thing Sara wanted was her making a big scene in the middle of the lab.

As her mind ran through the possibilities for the hundredth time, the very woman of her thoughts broke through her concentration.

"Hey." Cat greeted, causing Sara to hurriedly stash the note back in her pocket before turning around on the bench to face the blonde.

"Hi, I was just … taking a break." She lied quickly. Well, half-lied she supposed; technically she wasn't working so she was on a break of sorts.

Completely ignoring the odd behaviour, Catherine walked around her towards her own locker.

"I've got something for you." She stated, swinging the metal door open. Sara peered around her, mildly curious and equally nervous as to what it could be. She didn't really know what she was expecting, but what she was presented with was a complete surprise.

"What's this?" She blinked at it.

"It's a cell phone." Cath explained, somewhat needlessly. "I've already input my numbers, and the rest of the teams' – just in case."

"Thank you." Sara frowned, accepting the gift cautiously. "What's it for?"

"So I can keep in touch with you without Kirsty finding out." Catherine said as if it was obvious. "This way she can check your messages to her heart's content but she won't find anything suspicious in them."

"Cat, I…"

Before Sara could voice whatever argument was on the tip of her tongue, Cath silenced her with a finger over her lips.

"No, I don't want to hear it." She said calmly, pushing the phone towards Sara and folding the brunette's hand around it carefully. "Take it; keep it with you at all times. If I want to get in touch with you about anything not to do with work, this is the number I'll use."

Deciding that arguing with the older CSI would be futile, Sara pocketed the phone and offered a grateful smile.

"Thank you." She nodded meekly, sinking onto the bench.

Cath smiled brightly, glad to have found some small way to help. She was about to ask how things were going when her pager vibrated against her hip. Cursing Grissom's terrible timing, she reached down to stroke Sara's hair affectionately before slipping out to answer the persistent call of her supervisor.

Alone again, Sara reached into her pocket and extracted the note she had hidden.

She briefly contemplated taking it to Mandy to print, but the idea soon left her mind. That would involve confiding in someone else and that just wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

No, she would deal with this on her own.

And right now, that meant doing something that went against her every instinct as a CSI: destroying the evidence.