Title: Home
Author: DarkDreamer56
Archive: If you want it, ask please!
Rating: T
Pairings: N/S
Disclaimer: I don't own them, but if I did, oh the possibilities…
Spoilers: nothing specific, but anything up to Season 7 is fair game.

A/N: This started off fluffy, then kind of turned angsty, but I think I ended on a fluffy note. Dedicated to my cohorts in crime, Julie and Claire, who are much better at updating than I am :) And to JanuaryNineteen, I am working on the next chapter to Stalemate, but my mojo is having trouble sticking to it right now. I'll do my best to finish it though!

Nick crept quietly into the dark room, taking a minute to enjoy the feeling of being back in his own home, in his own bedroom, before he stripped down to his boxers and tee shirt and crawled under the covers.

"Mphphh," was the response he received as his arm slid around a familiar waist, his fingers splaying out across her abdomen. Nick had missed the feeling of her in his arms, her warm body curled up against his, while he'd been away working a case, and he knew it would be a long time before he ever agreed to leave Vegas for work again.

"Hmm…time's it?" Sara mumbled sleepily. She ran her hand over Nick's forearm lightly before resting it overtop the hand against her stomach.

"Shh baby, it's early, go back to sleep."

"No'm wake."

Nick chuckled at Sara's failed attempt to sound awake, even as she inched back further against his chest. "I can hear that."

"Home early? D'you…"

"Let's get some sleep, I'll tell you about it tomorrow." Truthfully, the case had ended in a disturbing, but all too common fashion, and Nick was going to need a little time to process it before he talked about it, especially with Sara. He'd rather keep her curled up against him for awhile, and fall asleep to the rhythmic sound of her breathing.

"Missed you." Nick felt Sara turn, resting her head against his shoulder while one of her hands splayed out against his chest.

He dropped a kiss onto her forehead, realizing he hadn't been the only one who had had a rough couple days. "I missed you too, Sar." Nick remembered the fateful McBride case out in Pioche several years prior, and how much hell that he, Sara, and Greg had given Warrick for so willingly leaving them behind to get back to Tina. As he was driving back to Vegas, pushing the speed limit as far as the Denali would allow him, Nick finally understood what Warrick must have been feeling.

Nick had settled his body around Sara's, letting his arm tighten around her just a little bit more than usual. He was concentrating on the feel of her fingers slowly drumming against his chest as she fell back asleep, when both were shaken out of their almost-asleep daze by an all too familiar noise from down the hall.

"Would you believe I actually missed that sound while I was away?" Nick whispered. Sara sighed and started to roll away from him when Nick pulled her back to the middle of the bed and planted another kiss against her temple. "I'll get her, besides, I haven't seen her in three days, don't want her to forget who I am."

"You say that like you didn't spend ten minutes standing in her doorway when you first got home." So Sara was slightly more awake than Nick had given her credit for; honestly it had worried him how easily he'd been able to get into the house without her noticing. "I fed her…" Sara paused as she blearily checked the clock next to their bed, "an hour ago." She caught Nick before he sat up and kissed him properly before snuggling down back into the bed. When she spoke again, she sounded more awake than she had since Nick had come home. "And there's no way to ever forget you."

Nick smiled as he climbed out of bed and headed down the hallway into the room that had been occupied for nearly six months by little Grace Marie Stokes. He turned on the lamp just inside the doorway, illuminating the room in a warm glow. Grace had pulled herself up into a sitting position in the crib, her chubby little fists wrapped around two bars while the top of her head rested in between.

"Hey sweetie, what's the matter?" Nick asked softly, approaching the crib. "And when did you start doing this all by yourself, huh?"

Grace lifted her head at the sound of her father's voice, her wails slightly decreasing in volume as she looked up at him. She let go of her crib, lifting her arms up in the air until Nick swooped her up and planted a kiss on the top of her head. Nick's heart nearly melted as she buried her head in his tee shirt; yeah, there was no way Nick was going to agree to leave home again anytime in the immediate future.

"Hmm, well you're not wet, and you're not warm…what's wrong Gracie?" He'd checked her diaper, re-buttoned her pink sleeper, and felt her forehead for a fever, but came up with nothing. And it was too soon for her to be hungry again. Grace didn't seem to mind that Nick was clueless though, she had already snuggled into Nick's embrace when he picked her up from the changing table, and had started pulling at the fabric of his shirt, happily babbling away to her father. "Were you lonely in here by yourself? Just wanted someone to talk to? I missed you baby girl, I think you got bigger while I was away…"

Nick settled into the rocking chair in the corner of the room, planning on getting Grace back to sleep before heading back to Sara and falling asleep himself. He rocked back and forth, murmuring softly as he studied the little girl in his arms.

Warrick had told Nick, on more than one occasion that he was going to be in for one hell of a time once Grace was a teenager. Nick tended to agree, realizing that he and Sara had quite the heartbreaker on their hands. Grace had inherited Sara's dark curls and wide, inquisitive brown eyes, but her smile was all Stokes. At six months old, she had quite the personality; she could be as mischievous as her father, and as stubborn as her mother, something that never ceased to amaze the adults around her. She already had Nick wrapped around her finger, a situation Sara warned him would cause trouble the minute Grace was old enough to realize it. Nick just wondered how he wasn't supposed to melt every time his little girl smiled at him.

The little girl in question squirmed in his arms, trying to get comfortable. She finally settled with her head against his chest, one hand clutching his tee shirt and pulling at the fabric, and the other providing her mouth with a thumb to suck on. Nick continued to rock her back and forth, lulling her back to sleep with the soothing sound of his voice.

"Daddy's not going anywhere for a long time, I missed you and Mommy too much. Baby girl, sometimes all that gets me through the day is knowing I've got the two of you to come home to." Nick paused as his emotions took control of his voice for a moment; the case he had just come off of was still fresh in his mind, messing with the delicate balance between the cases he could think about at home, and the ones that he had to shut out of his mind once he clocked out. It was a balance that Nick had spent years trying to perfect in himself, and then several more trying to teach his wife. Lately, the balance had been harder and harder to maintain, and it wasn't until Grace gurgled and pulled one of his fingers to her mouth to chew on that he turned his attention back to his daughter. "I go away for a couple days, and you're already sitting up on your own?"

"This morning, when I came in to get her, she was sitting up in her crib," Sara called softly from the doorway. When Nick looked up, he found her leaning against the entry to Grace's room, looking slightly more awake than she had before. "She's got a new game too. She likes to drop things off of her highchair, watch Mommy pick them up for her. Hit me in the head a couple times too, we may have that baseball player you wanted yet."

Sara crossed the room while Grace lifted her head at the sound of Sara's voice and began to gurgle happily. Sara settled herself on the floor next to Nick's feet, groaning slightly as she lowered herself to the floor. "What's going on Nick?"

He sighed as he felt her head rest against his knee, struggling to find the words for what he was feeling. "I don't know if I can do this anymore Sar."

"Can't do what?" It took Nick a second to process the slight flinch he felt at his knee with Sara's rather strangled voice as she asked the question. Sara thought he was implying something else entirely, and Nick didn't want to deal with that kind of misunderstanding so soon after getting home.

"What we do every day Sara, what we see…I don't know how much longer I can watch all this death and destruction, all the ways people hurt the people they are supposed to love." Nick sighed as he felt Sara shift, resting her hand above his knee. Grace had stopped squirming in his arms and her eyes were drooping, signaling that she was almost asleep. "The case out there, it ended up being the husband. He just woke up one day, decided he didn't want to be married anymore. He wasn't having an affair, he wasn't jealous because she was having an affair, he just shot his wife, the woman who gave him three kids and twenty years, because he didn't want to be married anymore." Nick could feel his voice choking up, so he paused for a moment to take a few deep breaths, grateful for the few kisses that Sara pressed into the skin over his knee. "I know our job is to find the how, and not the why, but I can't help lettin' myself think about it. And every case is takin' a little more out of me. You and Grace, you guys get me through, you're my world…but that's a lot to put on you." Nick felt so lost, but now that he'd finally let himself give a voice to all of the things that had been tumbling around in his head for longer than he cared to admit, he felt slightly better, knowing that it was out there.

Sara's thumb rubbed comforting circles just over Nick's knee as she answered softly. "Well that's something that we're gonna have to deal with then. If you need to talk about it, we'll talk about it. And if it's still too much…baby, just say the word, and we can get out of here." Sara's eyes were wide and serious as she looked up into his. "There are other places we can go, other jobs we can do. There's a whole world outside of Vegas, Nick."

Nick loved that Sara was so willing to leave everything behind for him, but he wasn't sure that would solve anything, so much as create more problems for them. "Isn't that giving up though? And I can't just uproot you and Gracie…"

Nick felt Sara push herself up from the floor, and was surprised when she gently took a now sleeping Grace from his arms. He wasn't sure what he had said, and whether or not what he had said had made her angry or upset her, but he was relieved to see the concern in her eyes as he looked up at her. Concern he could deal with; he just didn't have a fight in him after the few days he had had. Sara placed Grace in her crib, pausing a moment to run her finger down the baby's cheek.

When she crossed the room again, she settled herself onto his lap, throwing the rocker back in the process. She squirmed a few times, wrapping her arms around his waist as one of his arms settled around her. It was a tight, awkward fit, but it worked.

Her head rested against his shoulder, and Nick shifted his head so that he could rest his against hers. She smelled like the citrus of her shampoo and baby powder, a combination that had become very soothing to Nick in recent months.

"Nicholas Stokes, you are the strongest person I know. And you can't keep doing a job that is breaking down that person night by night. It's not giving up to realize that your job is taking a toll on your happiness. I want you to be happy, and if you're not happy here, we can find somewhere where you are. I love you Nick, my home is wherever you are, and Gracie...I don't want her roots to be here anyways. It's fine when she's little, but I don't want her to grow up in this city."

Everything that was coming out of Sara's mouth was completely logical, and things that Nick had only let surface in his own mind rarely in the past, but the gentle cadence of Sara's voice made everything sink in just that much more.

"I love you," Nick murmured, closing his eyes and imagining, even for a minute, what it would be like to leave Vegas. He'd needed Sara to say it aloud before he'd allow himself to picture what their lives could be like outside of the city they'd called home for almost a decade. He wasn't quite there yet, but Nick knew it was only a matter of time before Sin City took a larger toll on his soul than he was willing to give up. "We could look in California, somewhere near the coast?"

"Gracie would love growing up by the ocean, it'd be one giant bathtub for her to splash around in…"

Nick smiled; he knew how much Sara missed the ocean, and she sounded excited at the prospect of returning to it. Besides, it made it easier for him to think about leaving Vegas if he knew that Sara wanted it as much as he did, and wasn't just going along with it for his sake.

"What do you say we get to bed before Sleeping Beauty wakes up again? Besides, I think our bed might be a little more comfortable than this chair."

Sara laughed quietly and pressed a quick, but meaningful kiss to Nick's lips before she extricated herself slowly from the chair. He stood up and walked over to the crib while Sara went to the lamp, taking one more look of Grace before the room was enveloped in darkness. His eyes took a moment to adjust as he felt Sara's hand slip into his and pull him towards the doorway.

At that moment, Nick knew that he would be able to leave Vegas for work again, but this time he would be taking his family with him, and he wouldn't have to look back.

FIN.