The Force
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Sara/Archie
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 1,800
Spoilers: None
Notes: dynamic_gravity and I were talking about cheesy chat up lines. She asked me if I had one I wanted her to use in her S/W series. I did, and thought it would fit Archie. We then discovered that we both liked the idea of Sara/Archie, she made me a LJ icon, I wrote her the fic. We’re a fandom of two, so everyone else has to suffer.
“You did not!”
Greg’s voice was rapidly heading towards a range that only dogs could hear, while Nick was just staring at him, goggle-eyed, not quite able to believe what he was saying. Which was quite entertaining really, and Archie simply nodded slowly, raised his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip. “I did,” he confirmed, and the two other men seemed to have difficulty forming words, something that, in Greg’s case anyway, Archie would have said was impossible.
“You actually said that?” Nick finally asked, in the tone of one who was being asked to believe that the moon was actually made of green cheese.
“To a woman?” Greg’s tone was similar, and Archie nodded again.
“Why not?”
His question made Nick and Greg look at one another, slack-jawed with astonishment. “Why not?” Nick finally managed to sputter, but that was all he could get out, Greg picking up the slack, echoing the comment that had started off this whole conversation.
“Would you like to rub my light sabre?” Archie grinned, not so much at the memory itself, but at the several that followed it, and it must have looked even more salacious than he thought, because Greg promptly lobbed a balled-up candy bar wrapper at him. “You said that to a woman and she didn’t run away screaming?”
“Why would she?” Archie asked, fighting down his grin. “I mean, I was holding it right there.”
Stunned silence greeted this pronouncement, Nick and Greg looking at him horrified, then at one another, then back to him again. Archie was completely calm though, his eyes moving from one to the other, and just when they had enough time to compute what he’d said, to let whatever images come to them, he narrowed his eyes, letting them off the hook.
“It was a four feet, plastic, toy light sabre,” he told them, giving them a second for the words to permeate their stunned senses before adding, “What did you think I was talking about?”
Another moment of stunned silence, and Nick and Greg both laughed, but it was a weak laugh, as if they still were having trouble with this whole concept. “OK, ok… so let me get this straight,” Nick said. “When you said this, you were-?”
“At a sci-fi convention,” Archie replied. “At the fancy dress party.”
Greg nodded slowly. “And you were dressed as-?”
“A Jedi Master.” With full costume cloak, complete with light sabre, he and several of his friends hadn’t won the competition for best costume, but Archie hadn’t minded that, hadn’t expected to win anyway.
Besides which, he’d come out of the night a winner anyway, and the thought made him grin again.
“And some woman somewhere found this a turn-on?” Nick’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Archie raised an eyebrow at his friend, affecting his best Alec Guinness impression.
“Do not underestimate the power of the Force,” he intoned, and the other two chuckled, Nick running a hand over his head.
“Man, I will never understand women,” he decided, and Greg appeared to agree.
“Definitely.”
Archie shrugged. “She thought it was funny,” he said simply, and he knew it was true, because the second the words left his lips, he’d been preparing himself for a slap, or, at the very least, a withering stare. Instead, he’d been treated to the rarest of things, a beaming smile, accompanied by the most beautiful laugh he’d ever heard, and he’d sat down beside her, bought her a drink, his embarrassment at being seen by someone he knew in a costume like that completely forgotten.
“So, when do we get to meet her?” Nick asked, and Archie slammed back to reality, trying for nonchalance, hoping he succeeded.
“Soon,” was all he said, but miracle of miracles, that seemed to content Greg and Nick. In any case, any further conversation that either one of them might have made was derailed by the arrival of a fourth party to the break room, when Sara came in, headed straight for the fridge with the barest of waves at them. One look was all any of them needed to see that she was completely frazzled, and that she’d just been spending a serious amount of time in the garage underneath a car; hair pinned up, overalls knotted at the waist, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on her shoulders, oil marks on the backs of her arms. Grabbing a can of soda from the fridge, she took a long swallow, slamming the can down on to the counter, and only then did she look at them, as if she was seeing them for the first time.
“Hey guys,” she said, and they all smiled at her.
“Guess we won’t ask how your case is going,” Greg commented, receiving a withering look for his trouble.
“Backwards,” she growled. “And it’s not helping that the DNA lab is backed up to hell…”
Nick snickered, and Greg held up two hands, innocence personified. “Hey, is it my fault that three people can’t do my job as well as one me?”
“Yes.”
Greg opened his mouth as if to reply, but Nick shook his head, standing up. “Don’t even go there Greggo,” he warned, and Archie had to agree; this struck him as one of those times when Sara would find fault with anything that was said to her. “Come on… we’ve got evidence to process.”
Obediently, Greg stood up, but he couldn’t resist turning back to Sara. “Hey, you need a laugh?” When Sara tilted her head in answer, Greg pointed at Archie, who was still sitting at the table. “Get him to tell you about the worst chat-up line he’s ever used. It’ll make your day.”
Archie felt his cheeks warm, all the more so when Sara looked at him, head tilted, a funny smile playing around her lips. “Do I even want to know?” she asked, her voice low and amused, and he was suddenly standing up, even as she continued, “Or can I guess?”
He didn’t try to keep the smirk from his
face. “I think you can guess,” he told her, and she laughed, just like she’d
laughed that night that all this had begun, the night that he’d been walking
through the lobby of the
They’d ended up having a drink at the bar, and she’d told him about why she’d come there that night, told him how her older brother used to take her to see the Star Wars movies when she was a kid, how every time she looked at them, she felt close to him again. It had been more personal information than he’d ever heard from Sara before, and to his surprise, she’d seemed near tears when she volunteered it, adding that happy family memories were thin on the ground for her, but that recent events – and he’d guessed what they were, but hadn’t commented – had her seeking some out.
Then, as if she’d realised what she was doing, she’d shaken her head, stood up and made to leave. “I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I don’t know why I told you that…”
He’d stood too, his hand closing around her wrist – and when, he wondered, did she get so thin? “Jedi mind trick,” he’d told her. “Very powerful.”
Either the words or the Alec Guinness voice had made her smile, made her laugh, however lightly, and she’d looked down, shaking her head. “I should go,” she’d said softly, and somehow, he hadn’t wanted that.
So he’d shaken his head, invited her into the party, to join him and his friends. “If you don’t like it, you can leave,” he’d told her. “But you should give it a chance.”
She’d considered the words, and as it turned out, he hadn’t just been talking about the party. Because she’d given him a chance too that night, and she was still there, still with him, and they were standing in the CSI break room, as close to one another as was deemed proper for two who were officially just good friends, and she was smiling up at him in a way that was in no way either proper or just-good-friendly.
Back when he first met her, when he first started working at the CSI lab, she’d smiled like that all the time, and he, like so many others, had admired the smile, admired the woman, from afar. But then, there had been Hank, and the explosion and Grissom and a thousand rumours that had the ring of truth, and she hadn’t smiled for a long time.
Archie had missed that smile, and the fact that he’d been seeing it more and more lately, the fact that he could, and did, and had, put that smile there, sent a rush of pride, and something else, coursing through his veins.
It was the prospect of seeing that smile a little more than made him tilt his head at her, say with a teasing leer, “So Sara… would you like to rub my light sabre?”
Her eyes danced with merriment, and she looked over his shoulder towards the door, checking to see if there was anyone around. At the same time, her hand dropped lower, skimming very lightly over the front of his jeans, and he sucked in his breath sharply, even at such a gentle contact. She didn’t take her eyes off his as he swallowed hard, her hand staying exactly where it was, and when she moved it away, picking up her drink, he had to bite back a moan of frustration. “Maybe later,” she told him as she slipped past him, her voice even lower than it had been, throaty and lewd with promise. That, and her touch, brought to mind a series of images that had his pulse quickening, mouth dry, and he wanted nothing more than to find a secluded place and finish what she’d started.
A quick glance at the clock told him that what he already knew, and his voice was almost a whine when he asked, “How am I supposed to get through the rest of the shift?”
She grinned, raised her drink to her lips and talking a long swallow, an everyday gesture that, for some reason, seemed far more lascivious than it had any right to. Reaching behind him, he gripped the counter, the better to stop himself reaching for her, and she must have known what he was thinking, what he was doing, because she chuckled again, taking a step backwards. “Use the Force, Archie,” was her only suggestion, and then she was gone, back to the garage he supposed, to search for more evidence. In overalls and a tank top. With oil and grease, and dirt and sweat that she was going to have to shower long and hard to remove…
His mind, he realised, really didn’t need to continue along that train of thought, and he shook his head, heading back towards the AV lab, thinking that it was going to be a long shift. “Jedi mind trick,” he muttered. “I could do with that right now.”