Title: Risk
Author: Kenuck
Fandom: CSI: New York
Characters: Danny Messer, Lindsay Monroe, Stella Bonasera.
Spoilers: "Risk"
Rating: K+
Warning: Excessive fluff.
Disclaimer: "Risk" is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Author's Note: I wrote most of this last year and decided to finish it now that my muse has returned. And yes, I realize that the title is the same as the episode the fic is based around...
Acknowledgments: Thank you to Cazzie for beta'ing the first draft and Spunky for beta'ing the second (or was it third?) draft.
"Curiouser and curiouser!"
- Alice, Alice in Wonderland.
Danny Messer was seeing green. Emerald, to be precise: the colour of Lindsay Monroe's dress. She had arrived at the crime scene earlier in the night wearing a knee-length cocktail dress that hugged every curve and accented her assets perfectly. He had stolen a few glances at the scene, especially when she bent over or was leaning in a horizontal manner, and found himself straining to focus on the victim and the circumstances.
"The opera" was her reply when Danny had asked where she had come from. On a date? He couldn't be sure, but what he did know was that he'd like to throttle the lucky man that spent the night—or at least a few hours—in the darkness of an theatre with her, close enough to catch the glimmer in her hazelnut eyes, smell the fragrant floral overtones of her perfume.
He stood at his workbench, examining the trace evidence Hammerback had collected from the blunt force trauma wound, glancing up to watch Lindsay process the victim's clothes, her dress visible from under her stark white lab coat. She had gone straight to work when they had arrived back at the lab without changing. Not that Danny minded—it allowed a better view of her toned legs and glowing skin.
If she had been on a date, whom had she gone with? Had he asked her? Or she, him? A myriad of questions bugged him, and as the trained CSI he was, he was going to start his own investigation, beginning with her desk.
Once he had finished his report on the trace evidence, he slipped into the office they shared and looked over the items occupying the top of her desk. Everything was neat and orderly, her reports and files labelled and in a respectable pile. He reached across the desk and opened the top drawer. It contained a drawer organizer, with paper clips, pens and all other supplies necessary for office work.
Seeing nothing of interest, he began to close it when he noticed the corner of a small book peeking out from beneath the plastic tray. With the same meticulousness he practiced at a crime scene, he plucked the book from the drawer and flipped through the pages, scanning numbers and messy scrawls of handwriting, searching for the current date. He found the small box and read: Opera date. 7:00PM.
"Y'know, Danny," Stella said, appearing at his shoulder, "it killed the cat."
Damn it. He hated it when Stella was right. "What do you mean?" He snapped the book shut and turned to face her. Trying to play it cool, he slid it under a stack of files behind his back, and said, "I'm just looking for a stapler."
Stella narrowed her eyes, smiling, and plucked the device from the corner of the desk. "Didn't look too hard, did you?"
"Well, you know me..." With a puckish smile, he accepted the stapler and ducked out of the office.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He walked down the hallway in the direction of the locker room, stapler still in his hand, chastising himself for being so swept up in how perfectly that green dress fit Lindsay, how her curled hair framed and accentuated her round face... Dammit. He was thinking about her again.
Danny could've sworn that his heart had stopped for a moment when he stepped into the locker room and saw Lindsay standing in front of her open locker, straining to reach the zipper on the back of her dress.
She caught him just as he turned to leave. "Danny?"
"Yeah?"
"Could you help me unzip?"
Every muscle in his body froze, and his heart raced. Had she really just asked him to help her unzip her dress? His mind dropped to the gutter, and he imagined what it'd be like to stand in the darkness of her bedroom and help her out of that dress. To feel the warmth of the fabric as it would slide to the floor and lay there as they'd ease their way into her bed and he'd explore her body.
Danny felt blood rush south and tried to focus on anything but the thoughts consuming him. Baseball—a great past time of his. It brought him back to his childhood where he'd remember the excitement before every one of his Little League games, how he would dream of getting a home run as he pulled on his jersey and tights.
Lindsay would look damn fine in baseball tights.
Dammit.
There was his mind, off like a race horse bolting from the gate. He raided every conceivable corner of his mind, searching for something that would prevent an embarrassing scene.
The Staten Island ferry. He'd been on it too many times to count, and easily recalled how the crisp harbour air blew over the water, how the boat would coast over the filthy water, and the engine grumbled and moaned.
He wondered if Lindsay moaned in bed.
"Earth to Messer," she called in a singsong voice.
Danny gave a start and looked over at Lindsay, who was waiting to be released from the confinement of her dress. He placed the stapler down on the bench — he'd have to deal with that later. He stepped behind Lindsay and waited for her to gather her curls back with her hands before he took the zipper between two fingers and gently pulled it down her back, the stitched fabric parting. His finger brushed against her soft skin and small pulses of electricity shot through his body as he felt the warmth from her body.
Once the zipper had met its end, near the small of her back, she turned back to him and smiled. "Thanks."
"No problem," he said, and left the locker room, grabbing the stapler on his way out.
He stopped in the hallway and turned back, entering the locker room.
"Lindsay?"
It was her turn to spin around, startled. "Yes?"
"My stomach is about to eat itself and you haven't stopped working since we got back to the lab. You wanna go grab something to eat?"
She smiled. "I think I'd like that."
The End.