Title: Breathe In
Summary: FlackLindsay oneshot. I keep the bedside lamp on not because I'm too lazy to turn it off but because I want to memorize every detail of his body this one time.
Disclaimer: The names of all characters contained herein are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS and Alliance Atlantis. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
A/N: I'm writing this fic on request. I hope you all like it. Oh, and the title is named for a Frou Frou song of the same name. I highly suggest you listen to it, it's very FlackLindsay.
Rating: M

Breathe In

"And I'm high enough from all the waiting to ride a wave on your inhaling.
Cause I love you, no. Can't help but love, you know."
-Frou Frou

I'm in the lab now, drinking some sort of toxic waste that Adam tried to pass off as coffee. Don left my apartment before I woke (he's Don now, how could he not be, after last night?) and now I'm here. Here, I can quantify things. I can know things are certain. Now I know nothing for certain and while the little girl part of me wishes I had never come to New York, wishes I had just stayed in Bozeman, the mature part knows I have to stick this out. Mac is here and when he sees I've come into the lab before my shift starts he asks me why.

I turn to him and say simply, "Last night I did a terrible thing."

"We all do terrible things," Mac replies.

I say thanks and he nods, leaving me to my thoughts and awful crime lab coffee. I sit morosely at the break room table and I know Danny will be in soon, and I think maybe he already knows what happened last night. Oh God. I hope he doesn't tell anyone. I wish I could find something good about what I did last night—there was pleasure, and that's good—but Don was drunk and I wasn't. I should've been a better friend. I feel bad for using him that way, and I feel bad about him using me. He thinks I don't know about how he feels but I do and that makes it worse.

I remember the sensations he roused in me—heated urgency warring with delicious lassitude—and I feel my body respond, even in his absence.

I let the memory wash over me.

After that first clumsy kiss I cling to Don in the backseat of the taxi, drowning in his kisses, the ones that taste a mixture of Sam Adams and him. Suddenly he's using his tongue and I really have to try to gain my balance because if I fall now I'll never get back up. I won't want to.

When the taxi stops in front of my building I pass the driver a fifty (something I'll regret later; I've overpayed him) and reach for the door. Don grins absurdly and tells the driver to wait a moment. He climbs out of the taxi and shuts the door again, and I worry. I worry until he blows his warm breath onto the window, creating steam; he then draws a little heart inside and says, "How about that, Monroe?"

How about that, I repeat to myself.

If I didn't know better (and I do) I would say that I fell in love with Don in that moment, so proud of his artwork that he sits down on the sidewalk just looking. I get out of the taxi and help Don to his feet but now he's kissing me again and I hate myself just a little bit for kissing him back. I don't know how long we stand there but when we part we both gasp for breath.

"I belong to you," he says, and I know then that Don doesn't realize what he's doing.

We're at my door now, fumbling our way inside my apartment. As soon as the door closes behind us he pins me against it. Don's resting one hand on my hip, fingertips dancing lightly on the exposed skin, the other braced against the wall above my head. His eyes have gone from a delightful deep blue to a dark cobalt, focused hazily on my own hazel ones. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Don shouldn't be having this effect on me. It was never supposed to be like this.

I can tell before he even kisses me that this one will be different from the urgent kisses shared in the taxi.

He draws closer to me and I let out a rush of breath, opening my eyes and—Oh Lord. His mouth descends on mine with little grace, full of only need and desire, and I hesitate a moment before returning his affections with a wild abandon neither of us had expected. After we part, what I want to do is take a steady breath but it comes out a moan instead when Don tangles his hand in my hair and presses his mouth to mine again.

It's like being underwater. Water kisses filling my mouth, water filling my soul. I'm drowning in him and right now I couldn't care less.

As we move around my apartment I hear a lamp knocked off my desk and a pictureframe crash to the floor. It doesn't matter, really. Those things can be replaced, but not these moments. Never these moments I'm sharing with him now. We part for a few moments, gasping for breath.

"This tie's mine," he says, stupidly, drunkenly.

"It's very nice," I reply, taking off my sweater.

Don looks reflectively down at his tie and says, "It's my property."

For a drunk man he has surprisingly little difficulty in taking his tie off, and I admire his skill, but I'm more surprised at what he does next.

"If you wear it then you're my property too."

He loops his tie around my neck and tugs me into a kiss and I don't object. We make our way lazily to the bedroom, discarding clothes as we go. I had told myself that I've had sex before but even this one drunken time with Don is a thousand times better. There's feeling here, genuine care, and I've never had that before.

I keep the bedside lamp on not because I'm too lazy to turn it off but because I want to memorize every detail of his body this one time. He's beautiful with scars and bruises covering his body like some strange latticework and that's when I decide to play at loving him. I know I'm not a person of faith but, clinging to Don tonight, covered in a sheen of sweat and barely able to breathe, I keep moaning to God and, in the end, I think maybe I've found Him again, if just for a moment.

---

"Lindsay?"

I nearly drop my coffee cup, I've been so lost in the memory of last night. I turn and it's Danny, and by just that one look in his eyes I know he knows.

"What?"

"You're wearing Flack's tie."

Oddly enough I'm not horribly embarrassed. I'll have to find some offhand way to give this back to Don. Or maybe I'll just keep it. I think that's what I'll do.

finis.