(no subject)

[helsinkibaby]

Because I'm a very forgetful person... Happy Birthday dynamic_gravity -- you asked for W/S fic, and fic you shall have!

Title: The Charm
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sara/Warrick
Spoilers: Primum Non Nocre



You groan as the alarm blares, shattering the silence of the room, and you turn towards the pillow, burying your face in it, hoping against hope that the noise will go away, that it was all just a bad dream. Lord knows, you don't sleep much, but every now and then a day comes along where you find it impossible to tear yourself away from your pillow and comforter, and it looks like today is going to be just such a day.

A softer noise comes from behind you, something that sounds like a chuckle, and there's a warm weight at your back as he leans practically on top of you, reaching over your prone form to smack off the alarm. The noise stops, for which you're extremely thankful, but he doesn't straighten up properly, his body still pressed against yours, his lips brushing your shoulder, lingering there.

Most times, that's the kind of action that might lead somewhere; hell, that would definitely lead somewhere, but not now, not when you're jealously guarding your sleep for all you're worth. He doesn't take offence at it though, just smiles, tells you to stay where you are, that he'll come back up and wake you when breakfast is ready.

And you smile to yourself as you pull the covers tighter around you to compensate for his absence, missing his warmth as soon as it's gone from you. You allow yourself to fall into a peaceful doze, interrupted every so often by the sound of water running in the shower, by the sound of him padding back into the bedroom, getting dressed, going into the kitchen.

You're smiling even in your sleep, because you can't believe how easy it was to get used to this, and how much it means to you.

You stop smiling when you hear the distinctive click of your front door.

That makes you turn over, prising your eyes open, staring at the open bedroom door, listening, listening hard for the sounds of him pottering around the kitchen, cooking breakfast. You know what that sounds like, because once a week, sometimes more, he makes breakfast for you, never you for him, because you're a pretty lousy cook. He loves to tease you about that though, and you love to let him.

But there are no sounds this morning, just silence.

Frowning, worried, you climb out of bed, picking one of his shirts from the back of the chair, using it to cover your body, buttoning it up as you make your way to the kitchen, not even stopping to consider your bare feet, hardly feeling the cold tiles underneath. You call out his name as you walk, but there's no answer, only silence, and your heart starts beating just a little bit faster as you near the kitchen and there's still no sign of him.

Then you get into the kitchen, and it's as if your heart literally stops beating before lurching painfully to life again. The coffeepot may be full, but the power is switched off; safety conscious even when he's running out on you, some little part of your mind points out. There are eggs, and a bowl and a frying pan out beside the cooker, but no evidence of breakfast being started. You look around you, as if hoping that he's going to materialise, but no such luck. The only reason you'd know he was here at all is the fact that he was planning to start breakfast, and that the morning paper is laid out on the table, the front page staring up at you. The headline is something to do with one of the cases that day shift are working on, something you vaguely noticed when you threw it on the kitchen table when you came in earlier on, intending to read it after you got some sleep. There's something odd about reading the morning papers in the early evening, but it's a necessary evil when you're working the night shift, and just like the cooking, it looks like he started in on that particular ritual, but didn't get to finish it.

Feeling as if you're walking the halls of the Marie Celeste, you go back to the bedroom, get your stuff together so that you can shower and get ready for work. You convince yourself as you do so that any second now, you're going to hear his key in your front door, that he's just popped out to the shop to pick up something that he needed for breakfast, but you don't have much success.

When you're all ready for work, and he's still not back, you pick up the phone, and call his cell. Then his apartment, leaving messages at both places, stopping just short of phoning Grams, because the last thing you want to do is worry her if he's not there.

There's only one place you can think of to go, and that's the lab, so you get into your car and drive, resisting the urge to detour to some of the casinos that he frequented once upon a long ago, back before there was a you and him, back before you knew him. You pull into the CSI parking lot, purposely driving around, checking for his car, not seeing it anywhere, and when you get inside, you check the labs, the locker room, you even drop in on Doc Robbins, just in case.

But no matter where you look, there's no sign of him.

You sigh, and partly because you've nowhere else to check, and partly because while worry may have stunted your hunger somewhat, it hasn't banished it entirely, you make your way to the break room, sure that you've got something edible in the fridge. You also hope that Grissom doesn't have some kind of experiment in there, and it just so happens that you're in luck. There's something nuke-able and not past its use-by date there, and you're just tucking into that, bantering with Catherine, when Grissom and Nick walk in. Nick's got a vaguely distracted look on his face, and he's carrying the same morning paper that you've just left on your kitchen table, and a smile comes to your face as you realise that you're not the only one who gets their morning news late.

You continue eating as the conversation eddies and flows around you, and you're just about finished your meal, if it can be called that, when Grissom starts handing out work assignments. You blink in surprise when you realise that it's just about time for shift to start and that he's still not there, but you're not the one who points that out, Catherine is. And Grissom's next words make your last mouthful of food turn to sawdust in your mouth, because he says that he's not coming in today, that he called in sick.

You're sure that you must look as dumbstruck as you feel, but you hope you don't, because Catherine glances over at you, and Nick fixes you with that stare of his, his distracted air turning into one of pure concern, but Grissom is all business, his voice leading Catherine out of the room.

You stand on legs that are slightly less than steady, putting your dishes into the sink, noting absently the tremor in your hand as you do, and then Nick's at your side and you hope that he didn't notice. But you know he did.

"Is he ok?" he asks you quietly, concern as evident in his voice as it is in his face, and you swallow hard, biting off your original answer, which is "Who the hells knows?"

Instead you say, "You heard Grissom. He called in sick."

"I heard Grissom," he says. "But I'm asking you. Is he ok?" A shrug is the only answer he gets as you turn to make your way to the lab, but his hand on your shoulder stills your progress, and you look up into his eyes. "Sara. This is me."

The naked honesty there makes you catch your breath, look away, and while you weren't going to tell him, you find yourself speaking anyway. "I don't know Nick," you admit, the words as hard for you to say as ever. "One minute he was making breakfast; the next I heard the front door close and he was gone." You shake your head, swallowing hard, and when you look up at him, you see by the set of his jaw that he knows something, something that you don't. "What?"

"Sara?" He looks away from you, resting his hand on his hip, then looks back at you again. "Did he see this morning’s paper?"

The question comes out of left field, and you frown, considering it, until a hazy picture forms in your mind, clearing to show the morning paper, laid out on your table, not rolled up like you left it, and you realise that he did. Which means that Nick knows something that you don't, and there's only one thing for you to say. "Why?"

Nick sighs, walking over to the table, opening out his copy of the paper. He doesn't look at the front page, at the day shift case, instead flipping over the pages. When he comes to page five, he stops, looking at it, then back up at you, and you come over to the table, standing beside him, looking down. A smiling picture stares up at you, a very attractive, dark skinned woman, and you don't understand at first. Nor do you understand when you see that her name is - was - Lillie Ivers, that she was a singer from Vegas, moderately successful, about to hit the big time, except that she died of a heroin overdose last night.

You're looking at the picture, and then you're looking at Nick, and you still don't understand.

Nick's voice comes from very far away. "She was a singer…involved on a case that we worked a couple of years ago. There was … something … between her and Warrick. Nothing major, and it was before you two, way before you two, but it's just…" He sighs, shaking his head. "If he saw this…"

You nod, swallowing hard, because there's nothing you could say to that, even if you knew what you thought about it, so you nod again, taking a deep breath. "We should get to work."

He looks like he wants to say something, and you just know that he does, but he keeps his mouth shut, nodding, folding up the paper with the smiling face that seems to mock you, opening the door for you, letting you lead the way to the lab.

You do your job, quite a feat when you can hardly even remember your name, and you're grateful when Nick just works beside you in mostly silence, and when he does speak, it's all business, strictly to do with the case. He doesn't mention your private life, but he doesn't have to, because it's all you can think about. You take the time every now and then to check your messages, to try his cell phone, his home phone, but there's no word from him. It's as if he vanished off the face of the earth and by the end of the shift, you're coming up with pretexts on which you can visit Grams without alarming her.

All that is rendered moot when shift is over and you step out into the early morning sunlight, intending to head over to where you left your car. You stop in mid-stride, because you see him there, leaning against his car, arms crossed over his chest. He's looking at you, eyes boring lasers into yours, and every drop of moisture seems to evaporate from your throat. You find yourself moving towards him without being aware of it, and when you stand in front of him, there are so many questions you want to ask him, so many things you need to know, but you can't seem to make your voice work, so you just stand there.

He speaks first. "Come with me?"

You just nod.

You drive in silence, frowning when you pull up beside a cemetery. You're not sure why you're here, but he gets out of the car, and you follow him. You keep on following him until you come to a neatly kept grave, one that he stands in front of, and you keep your distance for a second, allowing him his privacy. He turns then, holding out his hand towards you, beckoning you over. It crosses your mind that it might be his mother's grave, because he's never shown you that, but when you see the dates, you realise that can't be it, because this woman, this Anna Collins, was born the same year as Warrick, and she died when she was twenty-one.

You know what happened before he even speaks.

"We were in college together. I was a Chem major, she was English Lit. Met at a party, freshman year. She had this long dark hair that went all the way down her back… killer smile…and she was crazy. In a good way. She was wild… never a dull moment." He smiles, shaking his head, obviously years back in his past. "I was pretty wild back then too." His voice is quieter now, sadder. "We were one hell of a combination." He sighs, looking at you, his eyes once more locked on yours. "You know what I'm talking about, right?"

You swallow hard, because this is something that you never knew about him, something you never would have believed. "Yeah," you whisper.

"Started out small…I guess most people say that. Ecstasy was part of the scene at the time; everyone was doing it. It was no big deal, that's what we told ourselves. Except Anna didn't stop there. She went on to more stuff. Got me to try it too, but it wasn't my thing." He shakes his head. "I didn't know how bad it was for her. Not until she collapsed one night. Got her to the hospital, the doctors did their thing… and when she woke up, she told me everything. I tried Sara, I tried everything I knew to get her clean, to get her to stop, but she couldn't. She wouldn't. I wanted to help her… I couldn't." There's a long pause before he speaks again. "I was the one who found her."

Even now, even all these years later, you can see that it still hurts him

"Nick told me," you find yourself saying. "About Lillie. He saw it in the paper."

A small, bitter smile flits across his face. "Yeah… I figured he might see it. Put two and two together. Sara, nothing happened between Lillie and me. I want you to know that. But there was something…"

"You were attracted to her," you supplement, and he nods.

"Yeah…from the first time I saw her. Just like with Anna…something pulling me towards her. And the more I talked to her, the more time I spent with her, the more I thought that there might be something there, you know? She was the first woman that I'd felt that with, that connection, since Anna." He shrugs. "Then we solved the case, found out she might be involved…and I saw her arms…fresh track marks. And I knew I couldn't go through that again. Life's too short."

You're not sure where this leaves you, so you let him fill in the silence. "I saw that article this morning…the picture…and all I could think of was what might have been… and what was. Anna was the first woman I ever really loved…Lillie, who knows where we could've ended up. And then there was you, sleeping down the hall."

You know you shouldn't, you know that there's something you're missing, but you can't help yourself. You can't stop the words that come out of your mouth, any more than you can stop the bitter taste of bile that's rising up your throat. "So, what does that make me?" you ask, and you can hear the hurt in your voice, feel the tears choking you. "Your third choice?"

Much as you love him, much as you might want to be with him, you're not going to stand for that. You were Hank's second choice, not that you knew it at the time, and you've got no wish to compete with a pair of ghosts, not even for him.

But he just shakes his head, smiles a sad little smile as he reaches out and takes your hand in his, your fingers entwined. He tugs you gently towards him, and you surprise yourself by going, your traitorous feet working against you, and by the time his other hand settles on your hip, there are tears in your eyes, just waiting for a chance to break free.

The chance comes with his words, soft and low, wrapping around you like a blanket, warming you, reassuring you. He smiles when he speaks, and it's like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud, and it lets you know that everything is going to be all right.

"No…third time maybe…but not my third choice."

There's a pause, and you know, you just know, what his next words are going to be, and you lean into him, resting your forehead lightly against his shoulder, your free arm going around his waist, and you stand there like that as his final words close around you both.

"My charm."