Disclaimer: I obviously do not own CSI: NY. I just own my car, my laptop and my crazy muse who seems to want to write 4 different stories at a time. I also do own any characters that you do not recognize. You can borrow them if you ask permission first!
A/N: Okay. So this is NOT a happy story, so if you are looking for DL fluff, you might want to go check out my other stories, Inflaming the Senses or Sadeness. This is a gift to one of my friends who just went through this with her boyfriend of a year. Needless to say, they are no longer together and she is still in shock over the whole ordeal. No flames because of the angst that I cause DL, please, but reviews are much appreciated. I have this planned for 3 chapters and please be aware of the T rating, as this does address sex and cheating and I do drop the F-bomb a couple of times. Happy reading!
Chapter 1.
Before He Cheats
Lindsay sighed as she walked out of the lab. Finally, vacation, she thought. She had worked fourteen days straight, with an average of twelve hours per day and as a result she was exhausted.
As she walked into her apartment she cringed at the state of it. While she hadn't been spending all her free time with Danny because of the shifts, she hadn't had time to clean at all. As a result, her apartment was covered lightly with dust and she badly needed to do laundry. She shook her head as she ignored the mess exactly like she'd been doing for the last week and walked straight into the bathroom to draw a bath. As she poured in her favorite bubble bath, she felt the beginnings of an idea forming.
You know, Danny and I have barely had time to say hello the last couple of weeks. I know for a fact that after he gets done with the early shift tomorrow, he's off for two days. She grinned wickedly at her thought. Maybe we can make up for lost time. I can surprise him with dinner and dessert; with dessert being me, of course.
She sank into the hot water, mentally planning what she needed to do to prepare. She decided to go shopping in the morning, after getting dressed in her sexiest lingerie underneath her street clothes.
On that happy thought, she climbed into bed, intent on sleeping for the next twelve hours.
--
When she awoke the next morning, Lindsay was feeling refreshed, but had a niggle of concern in the back of her mind. Is this the right thing to do, she wondered. We haven't really seen each other recently, and ever since Ruben died, he's been pulling away from me. She sighed as her hands faltered with the bag she was packing before shaking her head. I'm just overanalyzing things. That's what got me into trouble in the first place. If I hadn't overanalyzed when the trial was coming up, I would have let him in and it would have made things for us so much easier.
Coming to her decision, she left her apartment early to complete her errands before heading to his apartment.
After stopping at the store, she carefully juggled the grocery bag and her keys, trying to unlock the door without dropping anything. Finally, she got the door opened and looked around the living room in fascination. Danny was one of the biggest neat freaks she'd ever met and to see his apartment looking similar to her own threw her.
I guess he's been as busy as I have, but I know he's had at least a couple of days these past two weeks. An uneasy feeling began to reside in her stomach, but she shook it off. Oh, never mind. I'll just clean up before I start cooking, she said as she glanced at the clock and realized that she still had at least four hours until he got home.
Quickly, she stored the groceries in his kitchen and then began to methodically clean the apartment, something that soothed her. Within an hour, the kitchen and living room were back in their normally spotless conditions and she shook her head as she walked into the bedroom.
She crinkled her nose in disgust when she looked around at the disarray that his bedroom was in. She glanced at the bed and made a face when she realized that the sheets on the bed were the ones that had been on it the last time that she was over. Sticking out her tongue, she walked back out into the hall and the linen closet to grab fresh sheets.
Walking back into the room, she set the sheets on the dresser and stripped the comforter off so she could through it into the wash. Yuck, I am so not getting into the bed until the sheets are clean! She then pulled off the flat sheet and furrowed her brows when she saw the unmistakably—at least to the experienced eyes of a CSI—fresh signs of sex. Her heart leapt into her throat until she thought, he was probably just giving himself a helping hand. Lord knows I've done that often enough in the last two weeks! Gingerly, she placed the sheets in a pile on the floor before replacing them with the new sheets she had grabbed.
That done, she hurriedly threw the sheets into the washer and set it to run. Then she proceeded to put everything else in the room up. Realizing that her pile of trash was growing unmanageable, she walked into the bathroom to grab the trash can from there. When she looked down at the container, her blood ran cold and her eyes couldn't believe what she was seeing. A used condom.
Even Lindsay's logical side couldn't rationalize that away. Feeling ice settle in her stomach, she leaned over to the cabinet under the sink and grabbed a rubber glove. Meticulously, she went through the trash and by the time she was done, she was shaking uncontrollably. There were eleven condoms in all; most of them looked to have been used recently.
Shaking her head as tears welled up in her eyes, she began to sob uncontrollably. After about ten minutes, the tears finally slowed, but as she looked around in disbelief, the evidence was clear to her. A slow rage began to burn within her, melting the ice of shock. She drew a deep breath, stood up and walked to the kitchen. Grabbing a beer out of the fridge, she drank it quickly, wanting the oblivion to consume her. But the alcohol only stoked the simmering rage.
Wiping the last of her tears away, she strode back into the bathroom and gathered in incriminating trash. She carefully set all of the evidence out on the coffee table, the feeling of anger rising. After she had it all carefully place (and had drunk another beer), she walked back into the bedroom.
Seeing the keys to his motorcycle, she grabbed them with a wicked gleam of revenge coming into her mind. She walked back into the kitchen, grabbed a glass and ran some water into it from the tap. Then she dropped the keys into the water and made her way to the freezer, where she put it in. Let's see him try to drive his precious bike any time soon, she thought with glee. Then she went back into the room and began to ransack it, throwing the mattress across the room, emptying the closet and the dresser of every single piece of clothing that he owned.
She then went to his nightstand, where a picture of them in Montana ridiculed her former sense of happiness. She grabbed the Louisville Slugger from the wall and swung with the precision of Babe Ruth, shattering the glass and launching the picture into the left hand wall of the room. She felt some of her rage ease at the destructive act and turned, bat in hand, and walked back to the living room.
On her way back, she grabbed the two boxes of unopened condoms from the bathroom and put them down on the table, trying to decide her next move. She grabbed another beer from the fridge and sat, tremors still coursing through her body. As she finished the beer, she took a couple of the unopened condoms from the boxes and opened them, so she could place each one on the neck of the beer bottle.
She sat there for the next four hours, alternating between mind numbing despair and killing rage, her collection of beer bottles growing. With a sick sense of pleasure, she took out her cell phone and documented the evidence, gleefully emailing them to herself at work. When she heard the unmistakable sound of a key in the lock, she straightened up, placing the bat in her lap as she took a swig of beer.
Danny opened the door, startled to see Lindsay sitting on the couch. As he glanced at her, beer in hand, he said cautiously, "Montana? Why do you have a baseball bat in your lap?"
Lindsay felt flabbergasted. Of everything that I have here, he notices the bat?! She just glanced down at the coffee table, not trusting herself to speak just yet.
Danny followed her gaze and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight before him. Shit! How the hell did she find out? Ah, hell, I'm fucked. He stood there for ten minutes, searching for the words to ease her anger and coming up empty.
Finally he walked over cautiously, prepared to leap out of the way if she choose to use the semi lethal bat in her hands, and sat on the other end of the couch. He looked at her, hating himself for seeing the distrust and fury directed at him in her once loving eyes.
"Who and how long?" her deadly voice lanced across the silence.
Danny turned to tell her that it didn't matter, he had ended things, but with the way she was playing with the bat, decided to come clean. "A week."
Lindsay ground her teeth together, trying to maintain her calm, but realizing that she had missed all the signs. I feel so stupid. She shook her head. "Who?" she asked, her voice without trace of emotion.
Danny ran his hand across the back of his neck nervously before dropping his head and confessing, "Rikki."
"Why?" Lindsay asked, her voice cracking and reflecting the hurt and confusion she was feeling.
"Because she was there. That's all it was, Linds. Two people trying to make sense of a tragedy," he returned, trying to rationalize his decision.
Lindsay's eyes lit up with renewed fury. "You had to make sense of it eleven fucking times, Danny!" she shouted. "You ignored me. I kept asking you if you wanted to talk, but no, Mr. Macho decided that the best way to deal with a tragedy is to fuck the mother of the child you feel responsible for killing? How could you?" She saw him open his mouth to retort and held up her hand. "Wait, I don't think I want to know the answer to that."
She got up off the couch and swung the bat at the coffee table, breaking all the bottles in one swing before dropping the bat to the floor. "I don't know who the hell you are anymore. We're through. I'll ask Mac tomorrow for a transfer to the night shift because I never want to see you again."
Danny sat there in shock as she stalked out the door, slamming it closed behind her.