Title: Lonely Dances
Author: orchid_raindrop
Pairing: Cath/Sara
Fandom: CSI
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: CSI and anything with related copyright laws are not mine. I'm not making a profit. If you want to sue me all you'll win is the 20 dollar bill under my bed because that's all I have....
Summary: Just a short little story.
Note: Hi, this is the first fanfic I've ever written....I'm not completely new to the fanfiction world, but I've never written anything before. This hasn't been beta'd, so I apologize for any grammar mistakes. Tell me what you think about it, and if you like it, I'll post the other part that I have written.

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Sara Sidle knew that she worked too hard, pushed herself too far. Everyone around her seemed to know that too. Grissom was always encouraging her to just go lie down or take the day off. She couldn’t though; she was addicted to her work, and she poured work over her other problems, hoping that it would mask them. She went home and she was alone, which at times was nice and at others wasn’t. Moving from San Francisco had been much harder than she wanted to admit to anyone including herself. She missed her friends, and she had a hard time making new ones owing to her job; Sara was just so lonely at times. She felt a loneliness that inhabits the bottom of the stomach. She found her personality overpowering at times, and she knew that she was hiding her insecurities underneath it. Everyone else knew it too, but was just too kind to point it out.

It was the graveyard shift that she enjoyed so much. No daytime shift could ever feel the same. She relished in the blue-black sky, knowing that this was the time when she belonged, where she could just fade away and lose herself. Each time her alarm rang in the afternoon she could feel the blood begin to pump in her veins as she watched the sun slip behind the Vegas skyline. Some people never understood it; the night shift made them anxious; they felt out of place in the world, like they didn’t belong. Sara knew that she was supposed to be awake at the bizarre hours when the rest of the world was asleep.

It was one of those weekend evenings when she couldn’t sleep, she longed for some work to come along and distract her, but there was none. The rain pattered down on her apartment roof, but she didn’t find it soothing at all. Loneliness grabbed her by the throat and began to pull her down. Sara knew that it was time to get out of bed before the loneliness slowly smothered her. She pulled a shirt over her head without thinking, only stopping to curse at the tag that caught her viciously in the back. She pulled on a pair of nondescript jeans and headed out the door jangling her keys around her index finger. As she was about to click the door shut behind her, she changed her mind and threw her car key onto a chair next to the door, keeping only her house keys. She’d be walking tonight.

Lucky for Sara, she lived in a city that didn’t believe in normal sleeping hours either. She slipped out of her apartment complex and onto the sidewalk, letting the cool air cleanse her through the wrinkles in her leather jacket. Everything seemed pure after rain, even when a crime scene had been ruined. She turned her head nonchalantly from side to side, making sure nothing was out of place. She eventually found her way to a small bar, off the strip, but still not out of the action.

The bar was a small affair, though it did have a dance floor and an assortment of booths and tables. Sara went up to the bar and ordered a drink, something cold, she wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it did have alcohol in it, which is what she’d been looking for. She sat at the table with a number of mismatched chairs crowded around her, the only company that she’d have tonight. Long ago she had decided that she would leave her investigative skills outside of bars. Too much she didn’t want to know while sitting in there. She sat there, perfectly beautiful and lonely next to the flashing lights of the dance floor, drinking to her loneliness, her bitterness, and what she felt was her incompetence. She never measured up to her own expectations.

Song after song played, while people danced, moving up and down as a large, sweaty mass. After having nursed her drink to death, Sara let the alcohol dull her senses. Everything was a bit fuzzier, her failures less pronounced and the bar less defined. Sara decided that perhaps she’d move into the mob on the dance floor. Why, she didn’t really know.

She just let the music sway her. There was nothing to worry about here, no one that she knew would be here, and no one in the crowd seemed to mind her presence. Though she was in the middle of the crowd, she was disconnected. She was in her own universe as she danced, letting the loneliness bitterly sink into her pores. A number of tears slid down the Sara’s stubborn face, but she never tried to wipe them away. She just kept moving in time with the music; just kept moving as if she could never stop. Lights played across her face, reflecting off the trails that the tears had left, so much like tiny snail trails after a storm.

Sara raised her arms over her head, letting her wrists go loose and move on their own. She didn’t notice that someone had been watching her all of this time, watching her from behind. Someone’s arm snaked around her waist and she didn’t care. She felt the person’s fingers moving with hers above her head, and she didn’t feel so alone. She knew it was a woman by the feel of the hands and arms, but she didn’t care because all she wanted was for this person’s warmth to never leave her alone again. Sara knew this was incredibly stupid, so the rational part of her mind instructed her to turn around as the person began placing warm, breathy kisses on the back of her neck. She turned to face the mystery woman who still had an arm around her waist. She jumped backwards into another dancer colliding with a smack that sent reality coursing through her veins again. It was Catherine Willows, so much for not knowing anyone in this bar….

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