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Title: Repercussions
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Warrick/Sara
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up to the start of season six to be safe
Notes: For the [livejournal.com profile] writers_choice “calendar” challenge
Word Count: 789


With a sinking heart, Sara once more counts through the weeks, hoping against hope that the calendar will magically change its appearance, that an entire month will disappear, taking her worries with it. It doesn’t work this time, any more than it’s worked the other times she’s tried it, and sighing, she shakes her head, accepting her fate, knowing what she has to do.

Neither that acceptance nor that knowledge makes her task any easier though, and she finds herself taking the long way into work, her subconscious mind seizing on any chance to delay the inevitable. As she drives, her mind wanders back through the weeks on the calendar, to the seven week old circle marked on a page, to the terrible dates a couple of weeks after, those long hours spent in the lab looking at one of her best friends buried alive in a glass coffin, his torment played out for their horror on a computer screen.

It was, she knows, the night that Nick was found that it happened. It seemed like the entire staff of the lab had crammed into that little waiting room at Desert Palm, all waiting for word of Nick. When they’d been told that he was going to be fine, most people had cleared out, all apart from the once, and soon to be again, graveyard shift. Grissom hadn’t wasted too much time in chasing them away, though Sara had noticed that he’d stayed behind, folding himself in one of those uncomfortable chairs, staring at the door to Nick’s room.

Once, she might have stayed with him, or at least have doubled back after everyone else had gone.

That night she shared a cab home with Warrick.

It had seemed perfectly logical at the time, to both of them. Neither had their cars with them, both were too tired, too wrung out physically and emotionally, to even countenance driving. Living in the same general direction, hailing a cab and piling in was something they’d done before, done more than once.

But that night, things were different.

That night, when the cab pulled up at Sara’s apartment building, they were wrapped in one another’s arms, kissing as if the world was about to end, and when the cab pulled away from the curb, that’s what they were still doing.

In the cold light of day, she can remember walking out of the hospital, Warrick at her side, and thinking that right then, she’d do anything – anything – for a drink.

She can remember looking at Warrick, looking into his eyes, and knowing in an instant that right then, he’d like nothing better to be in a casino at a blackjack table.

For the last five weeks, she’s told herself that it didn’t have to change anything between them, that they could go back to the way things were. After all, if she slaked her thirst with his kisses, if his itching fingers were soothed by dancing across her skin, well, that sure beat the alternative.

But now that little circle that she marked on the calendar seven weeks ago is mocking her, because she’s never been that late a day in her life, and she knows what that means.

Nor is it the only little circle that mocks her. Her mind’s eye conjures up all too clearly the sight of Warrick’s ring finger, the shiny new band of gold gleaming against the light, his smile when he told her his news gleaming only slightly less certainly. In his eyes, there had been a question, and she’d done her best to answer it without words, hugging him and wishing him well.

She’d meant that, still means it, but now she has to tell him something that could very easily tear his happiness apart.

She doesn’t know if she can find the words, but finds her time has run out all too quickly, looking around to find herself already parked at the CSI lab. Moreover, in one of those strange quirks of fate, when she walks into the locker room, Warrick is the first person she sees. He’s standing in front of his locker in faded blue jeans and a white wife-beater, new shirt in hand, and the sight brings her back to that night in her apartment, memory banishing any semblance of speech from her mind.

“Hey Sara,” he says, flashing her that easy smile before looking at her more closely. Whatever’s in her face, he mustn’t like it, because the smile fades, his brow creasing into a frown. “You ok?”

Sara can’t move, can’t speak, and he takes a step towards her, lays a hand on her shoulder. “Sara?” he says again, and suddenly, she finds the words.

“We need to talk.”


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