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[helsinkibaby]

Big mad long update thing!

Mostly fic, though I'm currently looking around the Wolf site in prep for the weekend's activities... no Francie, we do have Lauren though. Ergo, I see my spoiler-free policy going up in flames!

For the fic - chureezee this one is just for you, also for writers_choice and their Breakfast challenge. CSI, Warrick/Sara, pure pure fluff.
Stealing Glances
Everyone on the CSI graveyard shift – and quite a few people who aren’t – knows one thing about Sara Sidle, and it is this.

She can’t cook.

Popular lore has it that there is little or no fresh food in her cupboards, that she lives on takeout and microwave cuisine, that her speed-dial set-up consists of every restaurant offering delivery service in a twenty block radius.

Everyone knows this, but Warrick’s the only one who knows that it’s not true.

Well, not entirely anyway.

Because, as someone who grew up in a B&B in Tomales Bay, Sara knows at least a hundred different ways to cook breakfast.

All of them are different, unique, served up with the ease of someone who’s had plenty of practice at that job. Not only that, but all of them are delicious, though there’s one speciality in particular, something to do with poached eggs and some kind of seasoning, that Warrick swears should be illegal, because nothing legal should taste so good.

The food may taste good, but that’s nothing compared to the feeling that Warrick gets when he wakes to the smell of cooking wafting through the apartment. It’s his second-favourite way of waking up, and on those days, he rises and dresses as quietly as possible, makes his way to the kitchen, hoping all the while that she won’t hear him.

If he’s lucky, if that happens, he’ll have a few precious moments to steal a glance at her. Her hair is usually loose, curling around her shoulders, and she’ll be barefoot, perhaps singing along under her breath to whatever happens to be on the radio. She’ll be in a t-shirt and shorts, though sometimes, if he’s really lucky, she’ll have grabbed his shirt from the floor, slipped it on. The first time he saw her like that, he was surprised by how good she looked, even more by how much the sight turned him on, and he went to her then, took her in his arms and proceeded to distract her enough to let the breakfast burn.

Most mornings though, he doesn’t do that, just stands and watches, loving the look of concentration on her face, the total competence and confidence with which she moves. It’s not unlike the way she looks in the lab, or at a crime scene, his other favourite places to steal glances at her. Those, he thinks, are the times when he sees, not the façade that Sara puts on for other people, the prickly exterior she projects to the world, but the real Sara.

His Sara.

And when he’s sated his appetite, when he can look no more, he crosses the floor to her, slips his arms around her waist and holds her from behind. Her lips curl up in a smile as she greets him, but she doesn’t look directly at him, at the very most, throws a quick glance over her shoulder. Most of her attention is focussed on her cooking, and he settles for a kiss to her cheek, to her shoulder sometimes, before doing the only sensible thing he can do; get the hell out of her way. He sets the table, or pours them both orange juice or coffee, all the while talking to her, sometimes about work, sometimes about what they’ll do after work, topics that run the gamut from the past to the present and, more and more lately, the future.

They talk and they laugh as they eat, occasionally sitting in companionable silence, and it is cosy and domestic and it feels more right than Warrick can possibly articulate.

So when he hears people talk about Sara and her lack of culinary ability, he says nothing to correct them, just hides his smile. It’s just one more secret between them, and that’s the way he likes it.

Besides, his mind is usually on other things.

Like what’s in the cupboards for tomorrow’s breakfast.

For the postcoital challenge, I have more Warrick/Sara,
His Hands
If Sara’s ever asked what she first noticed about Warrick, she’ll reply honestly, and without a moment’s hesitation, “His hands.” She’s pretty sure that whoever asks the question will be amazed at that particular response, because there’s so much more than that to admire about the man. Nevertheless, it is the truth.

In her defence, she will remind them that she was brought to Vegas specifically to investigate his role in the death of Holly Gribbs, that when she first saw him, he was playing hands of Blackjack in a dive of a casino on Blue Diamond Road. He was staring at his cards, wondering whether to hit or stick, and she stared at the cards too, at the hands holding them, advising him to stick, telling him she needed to talk to him.

It was only when he looked up that she noticed those incredible eyes.

Only when he stood up that she noticed that incredible body.

And when she noticed herself noticing, she pushed those thoughts far, far away, because she had a job to do, a man to investigate.

Later, when her job was done, she didn’t go back to San Francisco, stayed in Vegas. And she didn’t look at Warrick like that straight away, not when she had Grissom to look at, long held feelings for him to deal with.

She mightn’t have looked at Warrick that way; at times, she could hardly stand to be in the same room as him, never mind anything else. But in good times or bad between them, she always noticed his hands.

There was strength in those hands, enough to wield a baseball bat and break a window, enough to pack a mean punch when encased in boxing gloves. But they were gentle too, gentle enough to brush along her shoulder, the small of her back, as he was passing by her, and deft enough to dance through evidence collection, light enough to lift a fingerprint off the air.

Once, they were at a crime scene when she heard a piano playing, not for long, just a couple of chords. She left the kitchen, came into the living room, saw his gloved hands moving along the ivory keys of a baby grand, and she knew then that she’d been right, that those hands were perfect for playing music. He stopped when he saw her there, or maybe even before, sending an almost sheepish grin her way, and she wanted to tell him not to stop on her account, that she would love to listen to him play.

She wanted to, but they were on the clock, and he was her friend, and she was in love with Grissom, not with him, so she kept her own counsel.

She’s not altogether sure how they got from there to here, but here they are, and she is once again staring at Warrick’s hands.

But now, they are not on the clock, nor are they in someone’s living room. They are in someone’s bedroom, his bedroom, and she is very aware of the warmth of his skin at her back as their bodies spoon together, of how natural it feels to be lying on her side, encircled in his arms. Their left hands are joined together, fingers entwined, the palm of his covering the back of her smaller hand, and she stares at those long fingers, those musician’s fingers, and she shivers as she remembered how they danced over her skin, how they made her shiver with delight, made her arch against him, cry out his name. She shivers again now at the memory, and as she does so, he flexes his fingers, opening them out and closing them again, making her fingers move as well. His grip, when they close, is momentarily tight, not enough to cause pain, but enough to let her know that he is awake, a wordless enquiry as to whether she is, and she smiles to herself, because she shouldn’t be able to interpret post-coital gestures when it’s the first time they’ve slept together.

She tightens her own grip in response, feels a kiss pressed to her shoulder blade in answer, doesn’t miss how his lips are curled up in a grin as he kisses her. An answering smile spread across her own lips, and she pushes her body back against him, feeling as well as hearing the chuckle that vibrates through his system.

Those hands of his move then, gently helping her to turn around so that they are facing one another. It should be awkward, Sara thinks, but their bodies slide together easily, limbs fitting together as if they were made to, and he kisses her, long and slow and easy, and she loses all track of time, all track of everything except his lips and his hands and him.

When he pulls away from her, she barely stifles a moan of disappointment, only slightly mollified by his heavy breathing and dilated pupils. His fingers trail a path of fire down her spine, and she can hardly concentrate on his first word to her, a husky “Hey” that raises every hair on the back of her neck.

“Hey yourself,” she smiles, trailing her own hand up his back, feeling the muscles there ripple under her touch. It recalls a memory of last night, of him moving above her, a memory that’s good for another ripple of gooseflesh, a ripple that he takes as something else if the shadows that fall in his eyes are any indication.

“You ok?” he asks, worry in his tone, in his face, and his hand stills at mid-spine. He looks as if he’s afraid that she’s going to run screaming from the room, as if she’s going to tell him that this was all a big mistake, that they shouldn’t have done this.

Maybe, Sara thinks, the last part is right. There are any number of good reasons why they shouldn’t have done this.

But she’s not running away, and she doesn’t think that it was a mistake.

“More than,” she tells him, brushing her lips over his, stretching against him in a gesture that’s familiar and intimate, designed to arouse and achieving its objective, Warrick’s eyes showing as much, even as his lips voice doubt.

“You sure? Because I know we didn’t talk about this last night…”

Sara chuckles. “Kinda hard when I was tearing your clothes off,” she quips, and Warrick smiles at that too.

“You weren’t the only one,” he points out, and she’s sure she remembers at least one of her shirt buttons flying across the room, victim of his nimble, but not entirely careful, fingers. “But Sara… if you think… I mean, if you want…”

“There’s only one thing I want.” She cuts off his halting words with a firm tone, moving against him just as firmly, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Nor is there any, as Warrick’s lips, turned up in a smile, find hers, and when he pushes her onto her back, Sara goes willingly, leaving herself in his capable hands.

There is nowhere she’d rather be.

And for the tww_words no challenge, I have a late addition to my very unconventional universe of Secret Service Agent Wesley Davis/Ellie Bartlet West Wing stories. It's called
Welcoming Tears

“No? You said no?”

Ellie closes her eyes, wishes that she’d chosen to have this conversation over the phone. Or via instant messenger. Smoke signals if necessary, but anything would better than sitting across from her younger sister in the living room of her parents’ Manchester farmhouse. It’s just the two of them here this weekend, nowhere to hide, no parents or relatives to distract them, just Ellie and Zoey playing catch-up, and it was meant to be a relaxing weekend.

However, what with the bottle of wine they’d put away between them, Ellie got a little bit too relaxed, hence her slip of the tongue, hence Zoey’s exclamation, the wide-eyed, slack-jaw stare that accompanied it.

Ellie knows that there’s no taking back what she just said so she sighs, reaches for the wine bottle and refills her glass, doing the same to Zoey’s. “I said no,” she confirms, and if possible, Zoey looks even more confused.

“I don’t understand,” she says, and Ellie shrugs.

“It’s just one of those things-” she begins and Zoey interrupts her.

“But you and Mark were crazy about one another,” she says. “He’s come here, he’s met everyone, Dad likes him…” At Ellie’s raised eyebrow, she stops, visibly reconsiders. “OK, so he doesn’t like him, but at least he doesn’t hate him…”

Ellie smiles, takes a sip of her wine. “I know all that,” she says. “And Mark’s a great guy, I know that too.”

There is no rancour in her voice, because she’s telling the truth; Mark, her ex-boyfriend as of a week and a half ago, is a nice guy. A fellow scientist in a different division of the lab, he’s funny and charming, and he’s not so hard to look at. He knows about her work, agrees with its aims, and she’s always loved being able to bounce ideas off him. She started dating him almost a year ago now, a few weeks after the dark days of Zoey’s disappearance, when her Secret Service protection was at an all time high, and he’s never been put off by the trappings of her life, by what happens when you’re the President’s daughter and everyone wants a piece of you. She’d thought that he might be, during that whole kerfuffle over the funding, but while she’d been hiding out in the White House, he’d been calling her on the phone, telling her that things were going to be fine, telling her that he was proud of her after her press conference, keeping out of sight of the media even while he made sure she knew that he was there for her.

He is, without a doubt, one hell of a guy, and one of her best friends.

He is also, she knows, head over heels in love with her.

And she loves him too. She does.

“Then why?” Zoey asks, still unable to fathom Ellie’s reasoning. “If he’s so great, why wouldn’t you marry him?”

An excellent question, and one that Ellie knows she’s going to have to answer from an awful lot of people, people who had seen the proposal coming, just as she had, who had expected an affirmative answer, just as she had.

Because she’d always thought that when the day came, when Mark went down on bended knee, when he produced a lovely diamond ring that, her mind noted, must have cost him an absolute fortune, that she would say yes.

The word no had never entered her mind, not until she looked down into his big blue eyes and, for the first time in months, if ever, experienced a pang, because they weren’t brown.

The second that that thought appeared in her mind, she’d known that she couldn’t say yes to Mark because, much as she might love him, she’s not in love with him.

The man she’s in love with is a man she can’t have, a Secret Service agent with dark skin and dark eyes and a smile that can light up a room, who can make her feel safe just by being there. He is everything she could ever want, and nothing she can ever have, but she loves him still, and there’s nothing she can do about that.

She’d known then, in the split second between question and answer, that it wasn’t fair to say yes to Mark, not when she was in love with another man.

But how can she explain to Zoey that Mark’s only fault is that he’s not Wesley Davis, especially when Zoey knows nothing of her relationship with Wesley?

It takes another, larger, sip of wine before she can speak, and even then, the words barely scratch the surface. “I did love him,” she says quietly. “I just didn’t love him enough.”

Zoey’s eyes are narrow slits of confusion, darting all across Ellie’s face, as if the elusive clue, the missing piece of the puzzle, can be found there. And maybe it can, because her eyes grow wide suddenly, then narrow again, and she says slowly, too slowly, “Ellie… does this have anything to do with…”

Her voice trails off and Ellie looks down, because she knows what Zoey’s talking about, a conversation held in this very house, in her bedroom upstairs, three years ago come Christmas. A conversation where Ellie told her sister all about the man she was in love with, their one perfect night together, her abortion. She’d cried in Zoey’s arms that day, but they’d never spoken of it since, and Zoey’s not to know that Ellie still thinks about that child every day, thinks of how old he would be – funny, she thinks, how she always thinks it was a son, even though she never let herself think of him as a baby until Molly took her home from the hospital, left her alone in the dark of her apartment.

“No,” she says, cutting the thoughts off, and she knows that Zoey doesn’t buy the lie for a second, but still she pretends. “Of course it doesn’t.”

Zoey doesn’t believe her, but she doesn’t press her, instead changes the subject to something completely different, something for which Ellie is very grateful.

But when she drains her glass, refills it with the remnants of the bottle, she knows that her dreams are going to feature a deserted Camp David cabin, with her in Wesley’s arms, reliving that perfect night over and over again in her dreams.

She’ll wake up crying, but she’ll welcome the tears.


And now off to write.