Counting Blessings
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Possibly slightly for Mea Culpa, ever so briefly.
Notes: For the LiveJournal warricksara “Thanksgiving” challenge.
It might be Thanksgiving but, as she parks her car in the driveway, Sara doesn’t feel as if there’s much to be thankful for. She’s just spent the entire shift Dumpster diving with Greg, going up and down streets looking for a murder weapon that seems to have vanished into thin air, which, not coincidentally, is what their main suspect is going to do if they don’t get some kind of compelling evidence on him sooner rather than later. Tonight’s shift promises more of the same, chasing their tails, looking for evidence that won’t be found, except tonight they’ll no doubt have to contend with hordes of people out and about, celebrating Thanksgiving. Not that Vegas needs an excuse to party, she admits, but when given one, the city certainly turns out in style.
She considers ringing in sick, then thinks better of it – Greg would never forgive her, and it would undoubtedly start Brass hovering around her again, the older man having only just stopped “looking out for her” since her almost-arrest for DUI in May last year. Besides, the whole investigation would still be there when she arrived in for the next shift, so she’d really only be delaying the inevitable, so even if pulling the covers over her head and staying in bed for the rest of the month sounds appealing, she knows it’s not an option.
Somehow, somewhere, she finds the energy to get out of the car, make her way up to the front door. The morning paper lies on the step and she leans down to get it, purposely not opening it, not wanting to see what, if anything, they say about her case, or worse, about some other case that she can’t do anything about. She slides her key in the door and steps inside, listening hard and hearing only silence. Her key and the paper go onto the hall table, her jacket is hung up on the hook beside it, and she kicks her shoes off before she makes her way down the hall, heading for the bedroom.
As she walks, she’s torn between crawling into bed and heading for the shower, but when she reaches the bedroom door, looks inside, she finds a far more appealing option.
Standing and staring is far more interesting.
Warrick is lying in their bed, flat on his stomach, one arm resting on the pillow above his head, the other thrown out across her side of the bed – and when, Sara wonders, did she starting thinking of his bed as their bed, that particular side as her side? The covers have slipped down as he slept, resting against the small of his back, exposing acres of dark skin to her gaze. Her palm tingles with memory at how that skin feels under her touch, how the muscles of his back and shoulders ripple as her hands move over them, her eyes following the path from memory. She can just about see the tattoo on his left arm, remembers tracing the pattern with her fingers, her tongue, and a shiver runs through her as simply looking isn’t enough any more, and she finds her feet moving of their own accord, until she’s standing beside the bed, looking down at him.
She lingers a moment longer, then sinks down onto the bed beside him, right hand going to the small of his back, just above the covers, finding the skin there just as warm and soft as she remembers. Resting her weight on her left hand, lowering herself to the mattress, she slides her right up his spine, and the muscles move under her touch, just as she knew they would. His brow furrows, long lashes beat against his chest, and there’s the barest sliver of green visible for a moment as he looks at her. She smiles, murmurs “Hey,” and is bestowed in return with a drowsy smile and heavy-lidded, open eyes.
“Hey,” he replies, his voice rough with sleep, and her hand is on his shoulder by now, fingers curling over the bone, kneading the muscles there. “Here long?” he asks, still not entirely awake, and she shakes her head, swallowing hard against the sudden lump in her throat.
“Just in,” she whispers, and he must hear something in her voice, see it in her eyes, because he’s frowning, but not for long, because she leans forward, presses her lips to his, and then there is nothing else in the world but Warrick’s body against hers, his arms around her, hands moving through her hair, over her clothes, his mouth opening against hers, making all her worries vanish.
It could be either minutes or years before he pulls away, but when he does, they are both breathing hard, her clothing considerably more rumpled than it was. They are lying on their sides, facing one another, and as one of his hands moves through her hair, he says, “Sara… don’t take this the wrong way… but you stink.”
His eyes are dancing while he says it, and the words, the unmistakable honesty, surprise a laugh out of her. “Dumpster duty,” she tells him, the words all she needs to say for his nose to wrinkle, for a laugh to spring forth from his throat.
“I figured,” he told her, and she rolled her eyes, thinking once again about their bust of a case. The thoughts were even more bitter now, because for just a while, she’d been able to forget. His sigh ruffles her hair, his voice quiet when he asks, “You want to talk?”
She knows she should, knows that venting would do her a power of good. She also knows that it’s the last thing she wants to do today. So she shakes her head, her eyes serious when they meet his, one finger tracing a path down his cheek. “I want to forget about it,” she tells him, not sure how he’s going to take that. Some days, he lets her away with it, some days, he forces her to get her feelings out in the open, but he’s known her for long enough to know when to push and when to give way, and when he nods, shifting slightly so that he can look over her shoulder at the clock on the bedside table, she knows that today is going to be the latter kind of day.
“OK,” he says, and it’s as much agreement as it is precursor to Warrick demanding that she make a plan. “It’s almost nine… Grams is expecting us at one…” He pulls himself up into a sitting position, looks down at her. “You want to grab a couple hours now, or wait till later?”
She doesn’t bother telling him that it’s not really an option. If she stays in bed now, he’s going to stay with her, and sleep is going to be the last thing on either of their minds. Better to wait until after four, when he’s gone to work and she’s on her own, that is, unless Grams convinces her to stay a while at the house, sleep in Warrick’s childhood bedroom, which has been known to happen. The first time that it did, she met him in the locker room when she was coming into work and he was leaving, only to be told that he’d tried her at her place, and hadn’t got an answer. The look on his face when she’d found out where she’d been was priceless, and she smiles now at the memory.
He must thinks she’s smiling at something else though, because his hand wanders down her back, slips inside the waistband of her jeans, and his voice is a low, teasing mutter when he says, “What’s that look for?”
She laughs lightly, presses against him for a moment, enjoying the sensation of his hand on her skin, then she pushes herself up, pulls away from him, the action taking more effort than she might have believed. “Right now?” she says, running a hand through her hair, smoothing it down, “I’m taking a shower.”
His face melts into a teasing grimace. “Good idea,” he says, dodging deftly her slapping hand, and his laughter follows her as she makes her way to the bathroom.
She strips quickly, throwing her clothes into a pile on the floor, and she’s all ready to step into the shower until a little voice that sounds very like Warrick sounds in her head, chastising her for her messy habits. Shaking her head, she bundles up the clothes, throws them into the laundry hamper, then steps into the shower, the hot water sluicing over her body, washing all her cares away, and she stands there until the water is lukewarm and she can’t see her face in the mirror for steam.
Only then does she emerge, wrapping a fluffy white towel around her body, another around her hair, and she pads into the bedroom, selecting from the closet a pair of faded blues jeans (hers) and a faded WLVU t-shirt (his) as her apparel for the morning. She brushes out her hair, decides to let it dry naturally – Grams likes her hair curly, and she knows Warrick prefers it like that too – and by the time that’s done, a delicious aroma is already wafting through the house.
She smiles when she gets to the kitchen, because her nose didn’t steer her wrong. A pot of coffee is brewing on the counter, and Warrick is standing at the cooker, dishing up an omelette that she knows from experience is going to be nothing short of wonderful. “Good timing,” he says, holding the plates out to her, and she takes them over to the table as he pours them out two steaming mugs of coffee.
It’s a light breakfast, nothing huge, because they’re going to Grams’s house in a couple of hours, and knowing Grams, she’s going to have made enough food to feed an army. What it makes up for in size though, it more than makes up for in heart, and she eats hungrily, a smile on her face as she listens to Warrick tell her about Nick’s disastrous shift, and afterwards, she tells him about some of Greg’s more choice expletives during Dumpster detail.
Afterwards, with the dishes in the dishwasher, they retire to the living room, where they curl up on the couch, Warrick’s arm around Sara’s shoulder, and they flip through the TV channels in search of the elusive perfect program, something they both will enjoy. Warrick’s searching ends when they come across – what else? – the football pre-game show, and Sara rolls her eyes, mutters a phrase she picked up from Greg earlier on that has his chest rumbling with laughter under her ear.
Sitting there with him, she feels utterly content, and it’s suddenly very hard to keep her eyes open. She closes them, opens them with a start when she feels herself nodding off, and she feels him press a kiss to the side of her head, hears him whisper, “It’s ok… I’ll wake you in an hour…”
Trusting him completely, she closes her eyes, concentrates on the sound of his breathing, the decreasing volume of the television set, and she smiles, thinks about all the things she’s thankful for, like soft sheets and soft skin, hot showers and warm breakfasts, long conversations and long kisses, and the whole domestic set-up that they’ve somehow stumbled into.
It is cosy and it is homey and it is everything she ever wanted and more than she ever thought she deserved.
It is hers, and it is theirs, and for that, she is unspeakably thankful.