What Love Is


Notes: Something different…a collection of six drabbles, inspired by the LiveJournal CSI100 Challenge, to write drabbles using titles of songs by Mark Wills. I need to stop writing drabbles and listening to country music. That is all.


Sudden Stop

In the lab dusting for fingerprints, Warrick doesn't see disaster coming. As far as he's concerned, everything is fine; his life, for the first time, exactly as he wants it to be.

He's dusting for prints, but making plans for after work, either dinner and a movie out, or takeout and a video in. He knows though, that in the latter case, once they get through the door, the food and the video will take a back seat.

Which is fine with him.

Then Grissom enters, a serious look on his face, and the world comes to a sudden stop.

>*<*>*<

I Wonder If He Knows

Sara watches her captor pace back and forth, and tries to keep back her tears. She doesn't want him to see her cry, and she doesn't want whoever finds her body to see tear-tracks either.

She closes her eyes and wishes that Warrick was here with her, because he only has to take her hand to make the world seem better. She knows she's going to die, and her only regret is that she's never told him that she loves him.

She takes a deep breath as she feels cold steel against her temple and she wonders if he knows.

>*<*>*<

Still Waiting

It looks like an ordinary house, but he knows it's not. Sara's in there with an armed suspect and he's very afraid that she's not going to make it out alive. He's been here for hours, waiting and nothing has happened, but suddenly the night is alive with gunfire and shouting.

He waits with bated breath in the silence that follows, sure that she's dead, sure that nothing could have survived that hail of bullets.

SWAT go in as Grissom holds him back, and he doesn't take his eyes off the front door, waiting to see if she comes out.

>*<*>*<

Right Here

Her ears ring, her heart pounds, and there's a warm, wet weight at her back, but she's not in any pain. She wonders if she's dying, but when she's pulled to her feet, her muscles screaming in protest, she knows better.

She's helped to the door where she screws her eyes up against the police cars' bright lights, so she doesn't see him racing towards her, doesn't know he's there until he takes her in his arms, whispering that it's going to be ok, that he's right here.

She holds onto him for dear life, and finally lets herself cry.

>*<*>*<

Almost Doesn't Count

It's hours before he gets her home, all thoughts of doing anything other than collapsing on the couch and holding her now a distant memory.

She has other ideas though, heading to the bathroom, stripping off her clothes as she goes, telling him to burn them.

When she emerges, skin flushed, hair tousled, he takes her in his arms, kissing the top of her head. "I almost lost you," he breathes, his worst fear, and he feels her smile against his shoulder.

"Almost doesn't count," she murmurs, and he knows she's wrong so he holds her tighter.

"Yes it does."

>*<*>*<

Because I Love You

He waited with the police for hours until she was safe. He's let her cry on his shoulder. He's taken her clothes to burn them. He's cooked her food and made her eat it, and now she's lying on his couch, wrapped in his arms, feeling utterly content.

She didn't think she'd sleep tonight, but feels herself heading that way, and she murmurs a question that she'd never ask while fully awake. "Why are you so good to me?"

His answer is immediate, firm. "Because I love you."

She smiles then, her heart taking wing. "I love you too. "


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