Author's Note: Because you readers and reviewers have been so good to me and last night's episode of CSI:NY was rerun, here is some much needed D/L interaction.
DISCLAIMERS: I do not own any of these characters. They belong to Jerry Bruckheimer and the wonderful writers for CSI: NY. Any resemblance to scenes from the episodes is included for clarity and continuity and I do not claim any of those as my own work. However everything else is mine.
Being There
The cell phone rang at 4 am and roused Danny out of a deep sleep.
"Damn," Danny swore as the phone rang again and he grabbed it blindly off the nightstand. Of course he didn't need to see caller id to know who it was.
"Messer," he barked into the phone and then remembered Lindsay sleeping right beside him. He turned on his side away from her hoping that the rest of the conversation wouldn't wake her. Too late, she turned toward him and slid her hand around his waist to rest it low on his abs, then placed her chin in the crook of his neck.
Damn, how I am suppose to remember the location of the crime scene when she puts her hand right there?
He held his breath and focused really hard until Mac finished giving instructions. He strangled out, "Okay be there ASAP," clipped the phone shut, tossed it back onto the nightstand, flipped onto his back as he snaked an arm down and around Lindsay's waist and flipped her deftly on top of him. She gave a little squeal of surprise and delight.
" Montana, I swear you did that on purpose," he growled at her low in his throat.
"Did what?" she asked innocently as she laid her cheek on his chest and pressed her lips into his neck.
She could feel their body heat melding together through the thin fabric of their night clothes. It made her body wet and swell in response and she could feel his hardened response along her inner thigh.
"If you are telling me that you're ready for this, its rather poor timing," he said huskily, as he slid a hand from her waist down to rest low on her hip.
"I am and yes I know, but you just woke me from the most delicious dream before I was fully satisfied," she teased quietly as she traced a circle with her index finger on his chest.
"Daammn Montana," he groaned. "How am I supposed to process a crime scene effectively with that image in my mind?"
She laughed huskily, "I don't know, but how about I ride along with you and we can discuss some effective blocking strategies?"
He didn't miss the double meaning behind those words. "You're not helping here," he groaned again.
"No, I'm serious," she replied. And something in her voice had changed. Maybe to worry, anxiety, fear, he couldn't quite be sure.
"Lindsay, you can't go back to work yet. For starters you aren't back on your feet and secondly Mac would have both our heads," he argued with her.
"No, not to work, just to be there… so I won't have to be here alone," she trailed off slightly embarrassed.
He brought his hands to either side of her face and turned it to look into her eyes. "Ya okay?" It was too dark to read her expression.
"Um… I don't sleep well when you're not beside me. It happened yesterday morning after you left. And now this morning, you're leaving even earlier." She felt embarrassed but her need to not be alone in the dark and have those nightmares invade her subconscious was stronger. "Look, I can sit in the SUV and wait until it becomes daylight. Then I'll catch a taxi back here, okay? No one even has to know I'm there."
He knew Lindsay didn't make unreasonable requests and he didn't want her to be in anymore angst than necessary, so he agreed by whispering in her ear, "Okay, get dressed."
She hugged his neck tightly and pressed a grateful kiss into his neck before she scrambled off of him to get dressed. He had never seen a woman so eager to get out of his bed and get dressed, he thought ruefully, as he tried to calm his body enough to get his own clothes on without completely embarrassing himself.
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They didn't talk in the SUV, just listened to the morning news and sipped their coffee that Danny had thoughtfully picked up along the way. When they arrived at the crime scene, Danny squeezed her hand, "I have my cell, call me if you need me, okay." He brushed a quick kiss across her lips. She felt the slight tickle of his goatee and then he was gone.
She continued to sip her coffee and listen to the morning news, when a knock on her window startled her. She turned to see Mac with a small smile playing around his lips. She rolled down the window.
"Morning," she greeted him.
"Morning, I noticed you here when I came to get something out of my car. How are you doing?"
"Doing good," she paused and Mac look at her expectantly with the unspoken question mirrored plainly on his face, 'So what are you doing here?'
You didn't ignore Mac's question, spoken or unspoken, so she continued, "The inactivity is starting to drive me a little batty and I couldn't sleep, so I asked Danny if I could ride along." Okay that was fudging it a bit, but Mac didn't need to know all the details.
"You'll be back to it soon enough." Mac encouraged.
She knew this wasn't the best time to ask, but he had brought up the subject. "When can I come back?"
She saw the hesitation on his face.
"I mean just for modified lab duty. I know you guys could really use the help," she added quickly.
"Are you walking on two feet yet?"
"Yeah," there went another little white lie.
"I tell you what, you get a psych eval on my desk and I'll consider it after I read the report." Mac returned.
"Thanks, Mac," she replied gratefully. She really wanted to get back to the lab. Although yesterday at Danny's had been busy, she didn't know what she was going to do today, and honestly there was a better chance of seeing Danny on a daily basis if she were at the lab. As soon as she got back to Danny's apartment she would call and make an appointment.
She listened to the news and sipped her coffee until dawn started to break, then she turned off the radio. She told herself she would lean her head back for just a few minutes then she would head out to catch a taxi.
Much later, she awoke to a tapping on the window of the SUV. Danny was peering into the passenger's side window. He looked rather strained and there was a sense of urgency about him. She reached over and unlocked the door. He opened it, slid his arms quickly around her and turned her body towards him. With one arm around her waist and the other along the back of her neck, his hand tangling wildly in her hair, his lips claimed hers roughly and she gasped slightly in surprise. He immediately lessened the pressure, somewhat, and she relaxed enough to allow his tongue access to the inner recesses of her mouth, as it relentlessly invaded every inch. She didn't wait for him to gentle the kiss before she responded eagerly. She ran her hands up under his CSI jacket and around his neck. He had kissed her like this only one other time, that night in her apartment when he caught her off-guard about the possible intruder situation. At that time he was angry that she had played the situation unsafely. He had quelled his anger into passion and kissed her. Now she recognized the same need in him to expend the intense emotion he was struggling with at the moment. She thought it quite a creative way of expending the emotion, more creative than bawling into someone's shirt front for example. And she was only too willing to help him out.
When he released her lips, he leaned his forehead against hers and his breathing was ragged. She placed a hand along his cheek and stroked the hair on his chin with her thumb. She gently touched her lips to his.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
Danny never apologized unnecessarily, so this apology puzzled her.
"For what?" she asked softly, her other hand stroking the back of his neck.
"For using you in that way."
"You didn't use me, Danny, you reached out to me. There is a big difference."
He lifted his head and looked into the deep, soulful calm of her eyes with a questioning look on his face.
"Danny, it would be using me if you walked away without a backward glance, after an episode like this, but you never do that."
He looked at her a bit warily.
She continued, "How often have you been there for me? You've never let me down."
He nodded slightly.
Then she said very tenderly, "Danny, I am here for you too, okay?"
On some level, he had known that ever since she beeped him 911, on that fateful day, when she found his DNA at the scene of the Tanglewood murder case. Now she made it concrete with her simple statement of assurance.
She slid both her hands back around his neck placing her thumbs right on the hollows behind his ears, her fingers splayed out on the back of his neck. As she pulled his head down towards hers, she whispered, "Besides I think your way of working through the emotion is much better than mine, don't you?" Then she claimed his lips in the manner that he had claimed hers just moments ago.
He groaned in response as the wave of desire shot from his groin throughout all parts of his body. It was excruciating being in such a public place. He wanted nothing more than to become familiar with every inch of her body with each one of his five senses. He wanted to taste her, touch her, smell her, see her and hear her, to know her completely. He knew he would never be satisfied until he had the opportunity to indulge in that long desired fantasy. For the moment; however, he allowed himself to be content letting one hand slide up her back underneath her sweatshirt and camisole and letting the other slide down underneath the waistband of her sweatpants, caressing her hip at the waistband of her panties.
She quickly tugged his shirt and t-shirt out of the waistband of his pants and trailed her fingertips around his waist just above his jeans. The pit of her abdomen was a swirling mass of butterflies and fire. Could she resist him if he decided to take her right here on the seat of the SUV? She doubted it because her body was screaming to be completely possessed by him and to completely possess him in return.
It was well into a minute before they came up for air. Their breathing was ragged as they pulled apart. They continued to drink each other in through their eyes, while they heeded the one, remaining, working brain cell between them, which told them to remove their hands from each other. Lindsay reluctantly dropped hers to her lap. But before Danny removed his hands, he ran his hand around to her front to graze tantalizingly over her breasts. There was nothing between his fingertips and her skin; she wore no bra. Her nipples went instantly erect and her eyes rolled back into her head as a hard sigh escaped her lips.
That one little sound was almost enough to send him over the edge but Danny hung onto the one coherent, appropriate thought in his head and pulled his hands away. He ran a hand through his hair willing himself to calm down and blew through his lips as he looked up at the sky hoping for an ice storm right at that moment. After all, he had to get to the lab, some time today, in some semblance of a work mode.
"You cheater!" she exclaimed softly as his eyes returned to focus on her.
"I thought all was fair in love and war," he stated with a small smirk.
Lindsay smiled at him teasingly, "I'll remember that. By the way, do you have time to give me a lift home or should I catch a cab?"
He grinned slyly at her, "It'd probably be safer for you to take a cab but if you're willing to risk it, I'll give you a lift home."
"I'll take my chances, Messer," she challenged back slyly.
That's what I'm counting on, Montana! That's what I'm counting on, because if you only knew the half of it.
They lapsed into silence as Danny slid behind the wheel of the SUV and began the drive back to his apartment. Even though they had shared that passionate interlude and the teasing moment, Danny's mood was now somber. Lindsay watched Danny, wondering what had bothered him so at the crime scene. He glanced over at her with an inquiring look and she raised her eyebrows at him.
"What?" he said with a shrug and trained his eyes forward again.
"Just wondering what bothered you at the crime scene?" she asked casually.
"How do you know something bothered me?" he countered as he glanced at her again.
This time she wouldn't let his eyes slide away from hers.
"Alright, alright," he said lifting his hands off the steering wheel momentarily in a sign of defeat.
He sighed and rubbed a hand along his jaw line. "This crime scene was gruesome even for NY, I'll admit. A whole family was murdered, save the father who came home from the graveyard shift, during the processing, and fell completely apart."
His voice became a little quieter, "I can't blame the guy at all. You leave for work one evening and come back 10 hours later and everything in your world that you loved and cared about is completely gone. How do you recover from something like that?" He asked that last question more to himself than to Lindsay.
She placed her hand on his thigh in silent support and he looked down at it momentarily before he continued, "Anyway, after we were done processing and canvassing, I needed to connect with someone or something that could convince me that the world was still a half decent place to be in." He paused. "I'm glad that you were still there," he said gratefully as he clasped her hand on his thigh.
"Me too," she said with a small smile. Then she looked out her window and said with a touch of sadness in her voice, "If you figure out how you recover from something like that, will you let me know?"
He stole a quick glance at her but she was no longer looking him, so he lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a quick kiss across her knuckles in silent agreement.
They were both somber for the remainder of the ride back to the apartment. When they arrived, there were no available parking spots so Danny had to double park in front of his building. He gave Lindsay a piggy back ride up to his apartment and let her slide gently off his back to rest against his door. He turned around and placed his hands on either side of her head on the door. Their somber moods had translated into a smoldering need for each other that was tenuously restrained. His face was mere inches from hers and she placed her hands on either side of his face, caressing his bottom lip gently with one of her thumbs. They stared hungrily at each other, until Danny said tightly, "The last thing on my mind right now is work, but unfortunately that is where I need to be."
He then added huskily, "I'll see you tonight, okay?"
Her insides were quivering for him and she knew it would take only a whisper of encouragement from her for him to throw caution to the wind and follow her inside. She knew now, as he had known those few short weeks ago in her apartment, that they wanted to do this right, not in a New York minute. So she ignored every clamoring nerve ending in her body when she said as lightly as she could muster, "You can count on it Cowboy." As she gave him a playful slap on the rear, she said, "Now get going before Mac sends out a posse to look for you."
He chuckled slightly at that, touched her cheek briefly and was gone. She turned around and leaned her forehead against his door to allow herself time to regain the use of her legs. Oh god, what was she going to do today to keep herself busy?