Poet in my Heart
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
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.
Notes: For the LiveJournal Writer’s Choice “Stage” challenge
Sara is not,
by nature, a superstitious person, despite her mother’s best efforts to
inculcate in her such beliefs. She’s always been a realist, a pragmatist, never
bought into any of her mother’s crackpot notions, only believed the evidence of
her own eyes.
She’s
grateful for that now, and she walks around backstage at the Pavilion Theatre
in
Hence, the
place is quiet as a tomb, dark and dusty to boot, with lights and sets standing
abandoned, some covered, some not, looking almost like ghostly centurions
guarding the murderer’s secret. Sara can hear each thump of her footstep as she
walks, can hear the echoes reverberating through the air, adding to the whole
ghostly ambience. It’s as if she’s the only person left in the world, as if
she’s
Sara is
not, by nature, a superstitious person, and she’s going about her job as best
she can, but she can’t help it – this place is really freaking her out.
She jumps a
mile in the air when she hears music filling the auditorium, and her hand
automatically goes to her gun as she pivots in the direction of the sound.
Almost immediately though, she relaxes, because she recognises the sound of a
piano being played, and she also recognises the song that it’s playing.
It doesn’t
take a genius to work out what’s going on.
Biting back
a grin, she makes her way to the stage, seeing there what she knew she would;
an empty stage, an empty auditorium, but a not so empty orchestra pit. She can
see, sitting in profile at the piano, the only other person in the theatre
besides her, a look of intense concentration on his face as he picks out the
chorus of Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara”, a song that he would never admit to anyone he
knows, but that he’s taken to playing, or humming, to get her attention.
As she
walks, her footsteps echo through the auditorium, and his lips twitch in a grin,
but he doesn’t look up, doesn’t speak, and nor does she because she doesn’t
want to break the spell. Instead, she sits on the edge of the stage, her legs
swinging down into the pit and she looks at him, commits the sight to memory.
He’s not
the man she thought she’d fall in love with in Vegas, and she surely never
thought that he would fall in love with her. But she is in love with him, and
she believes, from the evidence of her own eyes, not to mention her heart, that
he’s in love with her too.
They sit
like that for a number of minutes, long enough for him to work through a couple
of verses and choruses, then he speaks, his voice low and teasing. “You just
gonna sit there?” She lifts an eyebrow and he shrugs with the shoulder nearest
to her. “You could at least dance for me.”
She laughs
at that. “You’ve got the wrong CSI,” she reminds him, and his green eyes shoot
lasers into hers, the music, the chorus this time, never stopping.
“No I
don’t.”
The words
are heavy, but welcome, and she feels a blush coat her cheeks, tries to regain
the high ground with a joke of her own. “You just can’t resist a piano, can
you?” Because this is far from the first time she’s heard him playing, not even
the first time she’s caught him playing at a crime scene, but if he’s
embarrassed by it, he doesn’t let it show.
“It’s a
beautiful piano,” he says simply, and she doesn’t know enough about pianos to
say differently, but she will admit that the shiny ebony of the wood, in such
contrast to the pale ivory of the keys makes it a damn handsome instrument. Not
as handsome though, she finds, as the long fingers that dance across the keys,
unmistakably tender, light as a lover’s caress. She can’t help but remember all
the times those hands have danced across her skin, just like that, and her
stomach swirls pleasantly in reaction, the sensation doubling when he adds,
“Besides, it’s not the only thing around here that’s irresistible.”
She laughs
again, more to cover up the effect his words and the music are having on her
than to indicate amusement. “You just have to have the last word don’t you?”
“That’s why
you love me,” he says, his tone light, his eyes dark as they meet hers, and she
feels a smile, slow and brilliant, lighting up her face.
“Yeah,” she
tells him, her voice unaccountably husky. “That must be it.”
For the
next few moments, they communicate by smile and music alone, then he clears his
throat, his face back to business, even if his fingers still play on. “You find
anything?”
She shakes
her head. “Not to do with the case.”
“We should
probably head back then.” He sounds like he’s looking forward to it as much as
she is, and she shrugs.
“It’s not
that late,” she tells him. “We could get lost for a while…”
“I like
that,” he replies, shooting her a quick grin, continuing to play. “I like
that.”
Sara
doesn’t say anything, just stays where she is, closing her eyes as the strains
of music wrap themselves around her, and it’s like they’re the only two people
left in the world.
She lets
herself get lost in his music, in him, and she hopes she’s never found.