Title: Confrontation and passion – chapter one.
Notes and thanks: My friend Helen asked "when are they finally going to sleep together?" and Udjat asked for "MORE, MORE!" Well, I aim to please so there you go!
This is a two-chapter story. The second chapter contains explicit sex scenes. Your reviews would be really appreciated! Thanks.
Thanks to my Grenoble gang, my colleagues and friends for their advice and encouragement. Luv u, xx. Also a special thanks to the Locker Room groupies for the inspiration and for being so fun:-D
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to CSI:NY. Only the character of Nicole is an original creation.
Aiden Burns and Nicole Favreaux were comparing the tyre tread they had found at the crime scene with the tread references in front of them when they heard an irate female voice in the hallway.
"Well, that's just not good enough!"
Nicole and Aiden looked at each other, their eyes opened wide in disbelief.
"What the hell?" Aiden mouthed.
"If you have a death wish, I'd be eternally grateful if you didn't get it granted under my watch!" the female voice continued.
"Is that Stella?" Nicole whispered, afraid that if she spoke too loud, something or someone might strike her down.
They heard the noise of footsteps walking away and the hallway became silent again.
"Alright, I must ask again: what the hell was that all about?" Aiden said shaking her head.
"I dunno. It was definitively Stella."
"Who the hell was she yelling at?"
"I dunno…"
"You're no help, you know that!"
"Aiden! I was here with you!" Nicole laughed. "I know I am a champion at multi-tasking but seeing through walls, I haven't mastered that yet!"
"I'm intrigued now. I want to know what happened."
"This place can't hold a secret for long. You just keep your ears opened and you'll find out everything you want and then some."
"You gossip-monger…"
Nicole's jaw dropped in mock offence. "I do not gossip, Detective Burns. I merely listen to the flow of information around me."
"Gossip, gossip," Aiden chanted mockingly.
"Alright!" laughed Nicole. "Keep it up and I'll tell you zilch if I hear anything!"
"Ok, ok, you win!" Aiden replied, light-heartedly, before concentrating on the tyre tread again.
Nicole was sat in her favourite chair in the station staff room. The grey chair had seen some better days and far too many behinds. But Nicole simply loved the way it almost sank to the floor when she sat on it. She was savouring a cup of herbal tea when the mention of Danny Messer caught her attention. Two uniformed officers were standing near the coffee machine.
"Apparently, she gave him a right old bollocking," one of them said.
Nicole's ears pricked and she tried to inconspicuously eavesdrop on the conversation.
"He simply sneaked off after a suspect, no back up, no nothing," the officer continued. "After what happened with Minhas, you'd believe they'd have put a leash and a muzzle on him by now."
The two officers left the room. Nicole felt as if someone had knocked the air out of her lungs. The chest tightened painfully. "Oh Danny! What have you done now?" she thought.
After she had put Molly to bed, Nicole had tried, quite unsuccessfully, to absorb herself in the reading of her Cosmopolitan magazine. The conversation between the two officers in the staff room kept ringing in her ears. Before the day was over, Nicole had managed to gather more information although the details were sketchy. Danny and Stella had been interrogating a suspect at his house, when Danny had noticed a second man trying to escape unseen. He had not said anything to Stella and had just followed the man silently. When the second suspect had noticed that Danny had followed him, a confrontation had ensued and weapons had been drawn. By some sort of miracle, no shots had been fired and Danny had even arrested the man. This, however, had not appeased Stella's anger at Danny's recklessness and her altercation with him had spread throughout the station like wildfire. Nicole sighed heavily. She wished she could understand what was going on in Danny Messer's mind, if only a little.
She had been staring blankly at the fashion pages in her magazine for several minutes when someone knocked at her door. She looked through the peephole. Danny… "Now that's good timing!" the young woman thought.
"Feels like I always end up on your doorstep, unannounced," Danny said with a smile as she opened the door.
"That's because you do."
Nicole walked away, leaving the door opened. Danny stepped in and closed the door behind him. The cold tone of Nicole's voice had wiped the smile right off his face. He followed her to the lounge where she sat on the sofa propping her bare feet on the coffee table. She grabbed her magazine and started flicking through the pages with such force that it was a wonder she didn't rip them straight off the magazine. Danny just stood there awkwardly.
"Is everything OK?"
Nicole threw the magazine on the coffee table and stood up to face Danny.
"What the hell happened with Stella?"
"What are you talkin' about?" the young man asked, lowering his face and licking his lips.
"Oh Danny! Please don't take me for an idiot! Aiden and I heard her while she was tearing you a new one. And the whole station is buzzing with the latest story about Danny Messer's lack of control!"
"Didn't think you were the type of girl who'd listen to office gossip."
"Is that all it is? Office gossip? All shockingly untrue?"
Nicole shook her head in exasperation at Danny's silent reply.
"Of course not. Stella would have never reacted like that unless it was justified," she said. Danny still seemed to be lost in the contemplation of the finer details of Nicole's hardwood floor. His silence was driving Nicole mad and she found herself ready to slap him to coax a reaction out of him.
"Danny, you should know better after what happened with Rodney Minhas."
This got the desired effect as Danny looked at her, his face full of anger. He then went from being totally still to extremely agitated as he started to pace the floor of her lounge.
"You can spare me the lecture, Nicole! I already got one from Stella!"
"I am not lecturing you, Danny! I'm just trying to understand why you feel the need to throw yourself in the face of danger all the time."
"We are cops! Our job is dangerous."
"We are crime scene investigators! But it can dangerous enough without having to purposely go look for trouble. What the hell were you thinking about?"
Danny groaned, exasperated and dismissed her question by a movement of the hand. But Nicole was wound up now and she certainly wasn't ready to drop this conversation.
"What's the matter with you Messer, uh? Can't live without an aura of drama around you all the time?"
Danny quickly closed the gap between them in a few, long steps and stood right in front of her, his eyes ablaze with anger and his breathing fast.
"What the fuck do you know about me, uh? About my life? You don't know! You can't understand! You were born with a goddamn silver spoon in your mouth!" he practically screamed at her.
Nicole kept her poker face on but Danny's violent reaction shook her to the core. She instinctively felt like screaming back at him but instead, kept her voice calm and low, not unlike the tone she used to calm Molly during a tantrum.
"Keep your voice down, Danny. My daughter is asleep upstairs."
Danny licked his lips and lowered his face again. Without her shoes on, Nicole was only a couple of inches shorter than Danny was and she desperately wanted him to look at her in the eyes. She stepped closer to him and put her hands on his waist, holding lightly onto his jacket.
"Danny?" she whispered. "Why is it such a foreign concept to you that the people who care for you don't want to see you get hurt?"
Danny sighed heavily, closed his eyes and tilted his head forward, resting his forehead against Nicole's. She sighed and bit her bottom lip. He brought his hands up and cupped her face. He had lost the will to fight. He was tired of being angry all the time. He opened his eyes and looked deep into the hazel eyes of the young woman.
She was about to say "Danny, talk to me" when he kissed her softly at first and then more urgently as his tongue parted her lips and started exploring her mouth. His fingers slid into the mass of her hair while her arms circled his waist. This is all he wanted. He didn't want to fight or argue with her. He didn't want to talk about work or anything else. She was all he wanted. He craved her to the point that it hurt him when he breathed. He wanted to run his hands on the curves he had looked at so many times, he wanted to taste her skin, he wanted to never let her go.