Title: If Wishes Were Pennies
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: CSI NY (Danny/Lindsay, with a smidgen of Danny/Ricki and Lindsay/Flack)
Summary: Post-Child's Play.Four ways it could have happened and one way it did.
Beta: A million thanks to losingntrnslatn for really getting this fic up to snuff.
Author's Notes : Was originally meant for the Elemental ficathon over at geekfiction but I couldn't stop messing around with it. My prompt was Chrysanthemum. White Chrysanthemums are symbolic of death in many parts of the world.
It shouldn't have happened this way…
He shouldn't have kissed Ricki; shouldn't have asked her to stay. Not when the grief was still so ripe and his girlfriend wanted nothing more than to help him with it. It wasn't like she didn't know the feeling of being the one left behind. How could he forget that, especially after he flew to Montana to hold her hand, as they waited for the verdict. Lindsay would have returned the favor if only he asked.
Why couldn't he just ask?
Instead, he's falling into sheets that still smell like his girlfriend, thinking the whole time how the woman beneath him doesn't fit just right against him. Her breasts are a bit too round and she's too soft underneath his hands. With every stroke, he wasn't becoming whole, but more broken. Not like with Lindsay, she always felt like his other half.
If he holds his breathe and speeds up his motion, he can almost see her there with him. He can almost hear her calling out his name. But when he opens his eyes, he doesn't see hers, staring back at him, shining with love. All he sees is regret in the eyes of a woman who was practically a stranger.
Stranger or not, they share this.
He wants to tell himself that they won't do this again, but he knows better than that. It's a cheap way to dull the pain, at least for a little while. It's not like Lindsay will take him back once he tells her the truth.
Every time he tries, he words feel like lead on his tongue. And every time she frowns at his silence, his heart breaks just a little more.
It shouldn't have happened this way.
It could have happened this way…
Shots fired, but he doesn't hear them despite years of police training. There is a robbery in progress, but someone else would have to call it in. Danny could only think of getting Ruben home. A block and a half away, Ricki is waiting for their safe return.
But, Danny is tired and not really paying attention. The stray bullet pierces his heart, leaving Ruben alone to cry for help in the alleyway. No one comes. The last thing Danny sees is the boy's face, but in his mind, he's picturing her instead and how he never did get to give her the ring in his bedside drawer.
It's Flack who takes the call, who finds his best friend in the alley, who tells Lindsay and watches her breakdown sobbing. It seems like Flack is always cleaning up his messes. They go together to tell his mother and she knows even before they manage to get the words out.
The funeral is brief and someone mentions the word hero, but Lindsay can't be sure who. Everything kind of blends together behind teary eyes and for a second she almost hates him for leaving her alone like this again. But only for a second.
She clutches his dog tags in her fist and lays white chrysanthemums on his grave, remembering the time they did this together for her friends. The metal bites into her hand and she wonders if the cut will scar. Then she'd have one on the outside to match the one on her heart.
Her transfer request is on Mac's desk the next morning.
It didn't happen this way, but it might as well have. She's lost her best friend either way and his mother lost both sons, even if she only actually buried one.
It could have happened this way…
He wakes up in a cold sweat, tendrils of the nightmare still clinging to him like shadows. Horrible, twisting nightmares of Louie and Aiden and now Ruben. Their dead eyes haunt him in one crime scene more gruesome than the next. There's always so much blood, on his hands and splattered on his clothing. He wakes up feeling like he's chocking on it.
He stares up at the ceiling, trying to get the images out of his head. He hasn't had one of those dreams in a while. He wants more than anything to reach beside him, gather Lindsay up in his arms, and forget everything in her warm embrace. But he can't do that; she isn't there.
He said he needed to be alone. He meant that he didn't want to break down in front of her and they both knew it.
After a half an hour of trying to fall back to sleep, he grabs his running shoes and ends up in front of her apartment. When he knocks, she doesn't even look surprised. She just ushers him inside, taking off his shoes, and laying down with him in bed. All she can do is hold on as he cries himself to sleep.
He knows she would say she was bad with this sort of thing, but the dreams never return when he's in her arms. She'll stay up and chase away the ghosts clinging to him. It's enough.
It could have happened that way. It should have.
It could have happened this way…
They failed, that's all Danny could think when he hears the gunshot.
He and Flack run into an alley; he imagines it's like the one Ruben died in. How's that for poetic justice.
Ricki is standing over the man, gun pointed at his head. The rapidly expanding blood pool leaves no doubt that she hit her mark.
"He killed my son," is all she says, still shaking as Danny's pries his gun out of her fingers. This was it; this was spectacular failure his father always said he was destined for.
Someone was dead, shot with his gun and he couldn't stop it. Mac was going to kill him. Flack and Lindsay too; they lied for him, after all. They were all going to burn for this.
"It was my gun, Montana. She had my gun," he cries out to Lindsay later, breaking down on the couch in her apartment. He can't believe she even brought him back here, that she even wants to be around him now that she knows what kind of a poison he is.
"It's not your fault," she says, taking his hand. She says the words and he knows she means them. But he can't help but wait for the day when she'd learn the truth. He's destroys everything good he touches.
He wishes he could say it happened that way, but even though the man was responsible, it doesn't mean he should die. Not when it was his fault too.
It could have happened this way…
The story gets passed around like all good locker room gossip. It wasn't every day that a kid jacked up on coke steals a police car and tries to see how many cops he can play bumper car bowling with. His best friend's part in the story gets more heroic every time he hears it. Danny wouldn't be surprised if he actually stopped time to rescue her in the next version.
It kills him that he wasn't there to see it himself. But no, all he gets is the aftermath.
Lindsay has a long scrape on her right arm, a shallow gash on her forehead, and Flack's hand on the small or her back as the two walked together closer than was socially acceptable for mere colleagues. The possessiveness of the gesture kills him almost as much as the fact that someone tried to hurt her.
Or almost as much as the fact that he isn't allowed to feel that way about her anymore.
It had been a year since she told him she loved him; a year since he said nothing in return; a year since she had walked out of his life and apparently into the waiting arms of his buddy.
But it didn't happen that way; at least that he could be grateful for.
He wonders what she'll say when he tells her. All the 'should have's and the 'might have been's seem useless as he stands in front of the door of her apartment, waiting with the words that will break both of their hearts.