Hearsay
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Spoilers: Slaves of
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the
show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site
Checkmate (http://helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.
Summary: Lab gossip is a terrible thing…
Notes: So, am I the only
one who looked at the scene with Warrick and Sara and Amy in the lab and got
the subtext? Yes? OK then.
Warrick is sitting at the table in the break room finishing off his mug
of coffee when Nick comes in, looking as frazzled as Warrick's ever seen him
look. "Tell me there's more coffee in the pot," he pleads, not
bothering with hellos, and when Warrick nods, he
follows up with another plea. "And tell me it's the good stuff."
"Sanders's private stash," Warrick confirms, looking up at
him. "What has you so wound up?"
Nick rolls his eyes, sits down beside him. "This case," he
says, leaning in, dropping his voice conspiratorially. "It's like a
twenty-four hour freak show or something man… you should see this place…"
Warrick snickers, because he got some of the more prurient details from
Greg earlier. "I heard," is all he says at first, and he really did
intend to leave it there. However, the devil in him has him adding,
"Ladies' man like you, I didn't think there was anything could shock
you…"
He lets his voice trail off teasingly, but Nick looks anything but
amused, holding his hands up. "Hey, I'm nobody's prude," he says, and
from the evidence so far Warrick would beg to differ, but he doesn't say so,
letting Nick continue uninterrupted. "But this is sick. Besides, can you
imagine having to talk about that stuff with Grissom?" He shudders
exaggeratedly, and this time, Warrick can't say that he blames him.
He can still laugh at him though, and does. "Rough gig," he
commiserates, hiding his chuckle by raising his coffee mug to his lips, even if
there's barely the dregs remaining.
"Says the guy who got a straightforward
robbery." There's acid in Nick's tone, and Warrick shrugs his
shoulders indifferently.
"Wasn't so straightforward," he points out, thinking that
there had been a few twists and turns in the case, especially with their
innocent victim not being so innocent after all.
His ruminations come to an abrupt halt when he realises that Nick is
chuckling now, and he's got the strange feeling that it's at his expense.
"So I hear." But he's pretty sure that Nick's not talking about the
case, and Nick's next words bear that out. "You've been holding out on
me."
Warrick's guard goes up immediately. "How so?" he asks,
trying to buy time, hoping that if he gives Nick enough rope, he'll share what
he knows, or what he thinks he knows.
"Don't give me that man," Nick says, still laughing. "I
heard all about you and your little fan club."
Warrick's got a pretty good idea what he's talking about, but he plays
dumb, just in case he's wrong. "You've lost me," he says, shaking his
head in apparent mystification.
Nick throws his head back and laughs out loud at that, all sense of
annoyance with his case gone. "I'm talking about the fact that you've got
a secret admirer…or not so secret admirer. Come on, you can't have missed
it."
"Must have." He's lying
through his teeth, and he knows Nick knows it too. "Though you know you
shouldn't believe all you hear."
"Our new lab tech, Amy? She's big time
making eyes at you."
Warrick shakes his head, trying to give the impression that Nick's lost
his mind. "You're trippin'," he says, but it's not the first time
that he's heard that this week, not even the first time today. Sara's told him
as much, several times, but she never did it with that kind of smile on her
face. In fact, Sara didn't think it was a laughing matter at all, nor did she
appreciate him telling her what he's just told Nick, that she shouldn't believe
all she heard.
"You're blind," Nick counters. "She's all over you every
time you go in there, and I'm not the only one who's noticed…put it this way, I
think Archie's a bit jealous."
His coffee cup empty, Warrick stands, shaking his
head again. "Right," he says, putting the subject to rest with that one
word.
Nick sees that, raising his coffee mug in surrender. "Have it your
way," he says. "Just don't say I didn't warn you." Warrick says
nothing, so Nick adds, "You heading home?"
"Yeah. You?"
Nick rolls his eyes. "I've still got some paperwork I want to
finish. I'll catch you later."
"Later." Warrick begins to make his way to the locker room,
thanking his lucky stars that he'd got out of that so easily, if a little
surprised that Nick had dropped the matter so quickly. Evidently, his case is
affecting him more than Warrick realised.
Before too long though, he realises that if the powers that be had been
looking out for him in one way, they've evidently decided to balance up the
cosmic scale somewhat; he's hardly taken a couple of steps down the corridor
before he's joined by the very woman that he and Nick had been discussing.
"Hey Warrick." Amy falls into
step beside him with a smile that Warrick returns, glancing around him
surreptitiously to make sure that no-one's looking at them. The last thing that
he wants is for any rumours to get started. Not that that seems to concern Amy
at the moment, because she's looking up at him with a distinctly flirtatious
tilt of her head. "Heard you got your man."
He nods, seizing on the safe territory. "Sure did. And a bonus
collar too. Good day's work."
"The first case I helped solve," she tells him happily, and
he can't help but grin at that, remembering how good his first solve felt. He
can still recall every detail of that case.
"You never forget your first," he tells her, but when he
realises how that sounds, he wants to bite his tongue off, even more so when
she looks down almost shyly, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear.
"So, I was wondering…" she begins, and just like back in the
break room, his guard goes up, because he knows what's coming next. "Maybe
you'd like to go out for a beer or something…help me
celebrate?"
He looks down at her, all wide-eyed and hopeful, then looks around
them, to see if anyone's looking at them. No-one is, but just in case, he knows
that they're only a couple of steps away from the locker room, so he jerks his
head in that direction. "Come in here," he says, breathing a sigh of
relief when he finds that the room is empty.
He lets her in first, closes the door firmly behind him, and when he
looks back at her, she's standing in between the lockers and the bench, arms
crossed over her chest. "This sure doesn’t bode well" she begins, and he holds up a hand.
"Amy, it's not what you think-" he tries, but gets no
further, not with Amy in full flow.
"Look, Warrick, I'm not some lunatic stalker type who's going to
follow you around the lab from now until the end of time," she tells him
bluntly. "But I'm into you. I'd like to try things out, see what
happens." She shrugs. "That's all."
He sighs, rubs a hand over his forehead. "Amy, I'm
flattered," he begins, and he knows he's said the wrong thing when she
throws her hands to the ceiling, rolling her eyes.
"I don't need to hear the but," she
tells him, taking a step towards the door, but he blocks her way.
"Amy, it's not like that," he says, deciding that one of Grams's
maxims is going to hold true on this, and honesty is going to be his best
policy. "There's any number of guys in this place would jump at the chance
to date you…"
"But not you."
Her gaze is almost angry, and he wishes that she'd stop interrupting
him and let him finish. He's never said this to anyone before, and he thinks it
might be easier if he could just get the words out. "I'm seeing
someone," he says, dispensing with beating around the bush, and he can see
her jaw drop in surprise.
"Oh," she says, her gaze dropping to the floor. "I
didn't know."
Which, loosely translated, means the rumour mill didn't tell her that,
which means that all is as it should be. "No-one does," he tells her
gently. "It's new…and you'll find out pretty quickly what this place is
like when it comes to your personal life…" Based on his conversation with
Nick, she's going to find out in pretty short order, but he doesn't tell her
that. "I wanted to figure out where it was going before I let anyone here
know about it… you know what I mean?"
He can hear the sincerity in his voice, and she must too, because she
looks at him, giving him a ghost of a smile. "Yeah…I know what you
mean." Her voice is very quiet. "It sounds like you're serious about
her."
He nods, picturing her in his mind's eye, the image bringing a smile to
his face. "I think I am," he replies, and Amy nods, reaching out to
lay a hand on his arm.
"Well then…" she says. "I hope
she knows how lucky she is."
Warrick looks down, shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know about
that," he demurs, but Amy's eyes are firm when she nods once more.
"She is." She goes to step by him, and this time, he lets
her, before something occurs to him.
"Amy?" She turns back to him, one hand resting on the handle
of the door. "Look…I'd appreciate it if this stayed between us…what I just
told you I mean."
He's worried that she might take offence at that, but she just laughs,
and the sound reassures him. "Trust me," she says, "I'm not
spreading this around. My lips are sealed."
He grins back at her. "See you later," he says, and she gives
him a wave before leaving, closing the door behind her. Warrick stands, just
looking at it for a long moment, feeling as if he's just dodged a bullet, and
he jumps when a voice comes from behind him.
"I told you she liked you."
Not sure whether to grin or shoot her a disgusted look, the way he
looks at her when he turns is probably somewhere in between. "How long
have you been standing there?"
Sara has the grace to look abashed, holding up her hands as if in
surrender. "Someone moved the trashcan around the corner," she tells
him, craning her neck back as if she can still see it from where she stands.
"I wasn't trying to spy on you or anything."
She hasn't moved, and neither has he. "I know that," he tells
her, because that's not Sara's style. "So, you heard all that then?"
She nods. "Enough to know that I was
right."
She's completely serious, and not a little jealous, but he looks down
at the ground, biting his lip to keep back a chuckle. They've had this
conversation before, most recently on the way to the fibreglass manufacturers,
when they'd come from the lab, Amy having told them about the BFK and the
fibres they'd found. That, Warrick knew, would go under one of the more
uncomfortable moments that he'd ever had within the walls of the CSI building,
him in the middle, Amy and Sara on either side of him, one openly flirting, the
other inwardly seething. He hadn't had to look at Sara's face when she'd told
Amy to tell them something they didn't know to guess that she was smiling
through gritted teeth, and if Amy had noticed, then she'd been wise enough not
to say anything. He'd also been wise enough to keep his face carefully neutral,
betraying no emotion, and he'd tried to do the same in the car, keeping his
eyes on the road, not allowing them to stray to Sara for a second.
"We've had this conversation Sara," he reminds her now,
chancing a look up at her. She's standing with arms crossed, one hip slightly
forward, her "I mean business" stance.
"You've got nothing to be jealous about." He takes his life into his
hands with that statement, and he knows it, but he likes seeing her eyes widen,
likes seeing her bluster the way she does when she's completely caught out.
"I'm not jealous," she protests, but no-one, not even Nick,
would be gullible enough to believe her, not when she's using that tone of
voice. "You can flirt with her all day if you want."
He sighs, shaking his head tiredly. "You heard her Sara," he
tells her. "She was flirting with me, not the other way around." He
takes a step towards her, and it could be wishful thinking, but he thinks he
can detect a slight softening of her features. "Besides," he continues,
taking another step. "If you were listening, you also would have heard me
tell her that I'm not available."
She looks down then, but he doesn't miss the smile tugging at the
corners of her lips. "I heard that." Her voice is so quiet that he
would have missed it, even in the silence of the room, were he not listening
for it. "You almost sounded like you meant it."
He's close enough to touch her, and he does, cupping her chin in one
hand, tilting her head up towards him. "I did," he says simply,
before bringing his lips to hers for a brief, chaste kiss.
When he pulls away, she's looking up at him again, and her eyes are
shining in the dim light of the room. "You heading home?" she asks
him, her face breaking out in a wide and genuine smile.
"I'll see you there?" It's a question, but it's not really,
and he's not the least bit surprised when she nods.
"Count on it." Grabbing her stuff from her locker, she walks
out of the room and he does the same, heading for home with a smile on his
face, even though he knows that he's going to have to listen to her reminding
him many times that she was right and he was wrong about Amy. In fact he
realises, he was wrong twice; because he told her not to believe everything
that she heard.
He's glad she didn't heed that piece of advice and, remembering the
look in her eyes and the feel of her lips against his when he kissed her, he
really wouldn't mind being wrong more often.