Sensation

Fandom: CSI/Highlander(ish)

Pairing: Sara/Sam (OMC)

Rating: PG

Word Count: 743

Notes: For Medie’s first lines drabble challenge

 

He was reading in the living room when he felt her presence, a warm sensation at the edge of his awareness. It was something he was getting used to, even though, as an Immortal, sensing someone’s presence was hardly a novel experience for him.

 

This, however, was very different.

 

An Immortal’s presence, no matter that he’d been sensing them for five hundred years, was always a shock, something akin to being dumped over the head with a gallon of cold water. It paralysed the senses, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, sending a thrill of tension up his spine as he readied to fight.

 

This sensation was nothing like that, much easier to get used to.

 

This sensation was one that made him smile to himself, one that relaxed him, warm currents of tenderness making their way through his system. It was a sensation that made him want to cast his book aside, reach for her and pull her into his arms, kiss her and never let her go. He refrained from doing so however, staying perfectly still, his eyes not even moving across the page, waiting for her to come to him.

 

When Sara did touch him, laying her hands on his shoulders, he moved quickly, turning and reaching behind him all in one smooth movement, managing to pull her onto his lap with one hand, saving the book with the other, and she laughed breathlessly as he did it, smiling at him even as her brow creased in a frown.

 

“You knew I was there,” she accused, and he shrugged with an easy smile of his own.

 

“Yes,” he said, and she blew air between her lips.

 

“One of these days…” she muttered, something she’d been saying ever since their relationship had taken this particular turn. Then, tilting her head, “Why didn’t you wake me?”

 

He shrugged, looked down. “You looked so peaceful,” he told her. “I just didn’t have the heart.” Because even before they’d started spending nights together, he’d known of Sara’s sleeping patterns, or the lack thereof, and since he’d begun sharing her bed, he’d seen first hand the effect of her nightmares on her, had held her as she cried herself back to sleep. That particular morning, she’d slept the whole night through, and he wouldn’t have woken her for anything, not had a herd of rampaging Immortals been after his head.

 

When she didn’t reply, he looked up at her, saw her looking down at him with a blush on her cheeks, familiar gap-toothed grin warming his heart. “Sap,” she accused him, and he didn’t, couldn’t, deny it. Shaking her head, she looked past him to the open book at his side. “What are you reading that’s more interesting than staying in bed with me?” she asked, reaching for the book, rolling her eyes when she recognised the words. “Shakespeare… I should have known.”

 

“Just walking down memory lane,” he told her, and she rolled her eyes again.

 

“If this is a precursor to some tavern tale with your friend, the Bard…” she warned, and he held up his hands in protest of his innocence.

 

“Wouldn’t do it,” he said, but he would, and he had, and her raised eyebrow reminded him as much. “Actually, I was thinking of you,” he said, pointing at one passage in particular.

 

“My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun,” Sara read from the book. “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red… If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head…” Her voice trailed off, and a none-too-pleased look was turned on him. “This made you think of me?”

 

“And yet,” he said, pointing out the last two lines of the sonnet, quoting them from memory, never looking away from her as she read them. “By heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.”

 

“Oh.” Her voice was very soft when she looked back up at him, and the finger that had traced the words reached up to trace a path down her cheek.

 

“Oh,” he said, nodding, pulling her lips down to his, forgetting tavern tales and Shakespeare and all other thoughts as he lost himself in the torrent of sensation that was kissing Sara Sidle.

 

Yes, he thought, as he pulled her close to him. This is a sensation he could get very used to.