Fire and Ice
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Warrick/Sara, Grissom/Sara
Rating: PG
Word Count: 678
Spoilers: Bloodlines
Notes: For the LiveJournal warricksara “fire” challenge
Sara’s not supposed to know that when she
was working in
They didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it always made her smile inside any time she heard it whispered behind her back, because it meant that she’d accomplished what she’d been trying to accomplish since she was a teenager. Ever since she was thirteen years old, she’s been trying to convince people, including herself, that nothing could touch her, nothing can hurt her, that she doesn’t feel any pain, and every time that nickname was used, it told her that she’d succeeded in at least half of her aim.
She can fool the rest of the world, even if she doesn’t always fool herself.
Sometimes, she thinks that what attracted her to Grissom, the fact that if she was the Ice Woman, then he was surely the Ice Man, impenetrable, untouchable, solitary. Nothing touched him, nothing could hurt him, and she wanted to be that way too, wanted to know what made him tick, what made it so effortless for him.
Falling in love with him hadn’t been part of the plan, but at the start, she’d told herself that it didn’t matter, that Grissom was ice, and as such, he would never let her get that close to him, thus, would never be in a position to hurt her.
She forgot, of course, that ninety percent of an iceberg lies underneath the water, and it’s that ninety percent that causes the most damage.
She didn’t remember that until she was
sitting in a cold
Heat makes ice crack, but she didn’t do that then, waited until she was on her own, in her apartment, and then she cried like she hadn’t cried since she was a teenager.
She’d put herself back together again; she always did, but she was never quite the same after that night. She’d realised that she didn’t want to be the Ice Woman any more, didn’t want to be cold, unfeeling. She wanted more than that, wanted to learn to live with her past, and with time, with therapy, she’d managed to do that.
She’d even managed to fall in love again, although in a serious case of “some things never change”, it had been the last thing she’d expected, the last thing she realised was happening, with the last person she’d ever expected.
Warrick’s not like Grissom, is fire rather than ice, even though he’s capable of being cold as ice when he needs to be. Most of the time, however, his emotions simmer just underneath the surface, threatening to erupt and overflow at any moment. His anger can be powerful, strong enough to sweep away anything that’s in its path, matched only by his capacity for tenderness, his ability to take her in his arms and make her forget about anything that’s bothering her.
Falling in love with him was a surprise, but not as much of a surprise as the emotions, the reactions he evokes in her. Because when he looks at her, eyes smouldering with desire, she burns to touch him, have him touch her, and when he kisses her, it’s a hundred little tongues of fire dancing along her skin, and she can’t get enough of his touch, arches into it, wanting, needing more. He laughs then, pulls her closer to him, but never close enough, and she loses herself in him, lets his touch melt her.
In
But in