Chapter 13 – December 13, 2006

It was one o'clock before she was ready to head over to Danny's and she didn't go empty handed. While she'd been at the mall the previous day, she'd glimpsed a gingerbread house making kit in one of the windows. To leave it there would have been wrong and it gave her an excuse to spend extra time with him. She was paid to be observant, but she also had a killer memory.

"Messer." He sounded groggy and Lindsay almost laughed.

"Morning, Danny."

"Montana?"

"Yeah, are you okay if I come grab my stuff now?"

There was a pause that confirmed Danny had been woken by the phone. He always took longer to remember things he was supposed to do when he wasn't 'awake'. "Yeah, Montana, I'm good."

This time, she did chuckle. "Danny, you just woke up." Regardless, she started around her apartment, picking up her bag and sitting on the couch, phone in between her shoulder and ear while she slipped her shoes on.

"I'll be presentable by the time you get here," he assured her and she already heard the rustling of fabric that proved he was getting out of bed. "You got errands to run?"

She knitted her brow in confusion. "No. Why?"

"You're coming out here just to pick up your bags? We work tomorrow and I can bring them to the lab." He almost slapped his forehead when the words came out of his mouth. He wanted to spend the afternoon with her.

Her stomach dropped to her feet. Maybe he'd gone out again after they'd talked on the phone and had other plans. "I want to get them wrapped today. I don't know if there's going to be a crazy case in the next week so I want to get it done while I can. I can wait if you're busy."

"No, no." Then he paused. "You wanna spend the afternoon here?"

Oh, there was her stomach, back in its rightful place again. "And do what?" she asked stupidly, for a lack of anything else to say.

"Wrap presents? We'll make an afternoon out of it," he proposed.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, even though she knew Danny couldn't see it. "You aren't going to stick me with wrapping my gifts and yours, are you?"

"You have no faith in me," he exclaimed. "I can wrap my own presents."

"Okay, okay. Are you sure you want to spend the afternoon with me?" Part of her was still insecure about doing anything, simply because she wasn't sure how truthful he was being. In the time it would take her to get to his apartment, he could be showered, dressed and have kicked a night time guest out of his place.

"If you're not here in forty-five minutes, Montana, I'm filing a missing persons."

She wanted to slap herself for the feeling of warmth that flooded her chest. "Okay."

He'd rushed around his apartment, tidying the place up, mostly throwing everything into his bedroom and closing the door. He was putting away his dishes from the last time he'd had dinner when the knock came on the door. He pulled it open in surprise.

"How'd you get up here?" he asked.

"Your neighbours were on their way out when I came in and my hands are all full," she answered, holding up the aforementioned full hands.

He relieved her of half of the bags, taking them to his living room where he'd moved the coffee table to open the floor between the couch and the television. "Did you bring all of your gifts?" he asked with a playful grunt when he set the bags down.

She set her own handfuls down before slapping at his arm. "I had to bring wrapping and ribbons," she told him. "Then I had to pick and choose which presents to bring."

"Mine around?" He was already pawing through the bags to see if something jumped out at him. He recognized some of the gifts from things she'd bought the previous night, and some things that were new.

"I'm not that stupid, Danny." In reality, she hadn't decided what to make him for Christmas yet. There was no gift for him yet.

He pulled a box out of one of her bags and held it up to her eye level. "What's this, Montana?"

She looked up from unpacking some of her gifts, trying to figure out which gifts went to which member of the lab. "Gingerbread," she answered, as if it were obvious.

"I see that," he replied with a roll of his eyes.

Lindsay shrugged. "You mentioned you used to put one together with your mom, I figured we could try and put one together."

"Where did you find it?"

"Yesterday when we were shopping," she answered nonchalantly.

"And I didn't know?"

She smirked. "You were a little busy whining at the time, Danny."

He sighed. "I hate shopping in December."

She straightened her back from leaning over the bags. "Which do you want to do first?"

He arched an eyebrow.

"Gingerbread or presents?"

He looked between both, picturing the patience it was going to take to wrap the gifts. He had too much energy. "Gingerbread."

"Danny!" Lindsay squealed side-stepping away from his icing covered fingers.

"What?" he responded innocently, holding his hands, fingertips of his left covered in white sugar, by his ears.

"You keep your hands away from my nose," she shot back, well aware his white-tipped fingers had been aimed for her face.

"It's icing, Montana."

"And it gets sticky. I don't want to deal with a sticky face," she scolded, trying to carefully place another gumdrop on the roof of their gingerbread house. This little thing was going to be a masterpiece if she had anything to do with it. She couldn't remember the last time, if ever, she'd made a gingerbread house.

"I have a shower, you can clean off." He was half way through the sentence when he thought about Lindsay using his shower and forced himself not to groan. She'd proposed the relationship and he was happy to oblige her, taking it at her pace. Regardless of how torturously slow it was.

Lindsay laughed. "I would hope so," she responded, blowing an errant strand of hair, too short for her ponytail, out of her face. She smiled brightly when the last gumdrop was in place on the roof and rewarded herself by eating one of the leftovers. Noticing Danny was suspiciously silent, she glanced back at him, over her shoulder. He was simply watching her. "It's not nice to stare."

Startled out of his fantasy land, where this was an everyday occurrence, Danny smirked. "I can't help it." She looked deliciously domestic leaning over his kitchen counter in comfortable-looking jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, her hair swept back into a high pony that still didn't catch all of the wayward curls. She'd long since kicked off her shoes and socks, claiming she hated anything on her feet. By the time he'd made it over her body and back up again, she was blushing bright pink.

"Danny," she whispered, shyly, her blush intensifying.

He took the opportunity of her distraction with his blatant stare to swipe icing over her nose. "Perfect," he said with a grin.

"Danny!"

He laughed, grabbing a paper towel and folding it into quarters. He figured she wouldn't really appreciate it if he removed the icing with his lips and tongue like he wanted. Carefully he wiped at the white spots, grinning the whole time. He hadn't realized he'd stepped closer, nor had he realized her chin was perfectly cupped in his hand. He leaned in, careful to keep her eyes, but stopped before he reached her lips.

What the hell is he doing? Lindsay's mind screamed at her. She didn't move, wouldn't move, too focused on keeping herself upright to do anything else.

He wanted her to close the space between them, wanted to make sure this was what she wanted. When she didn't move to close the space, he redirected, and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. "All gone."

She shivered at the timbre of his voice, feeling remarkably empty. She stepped back and watched his eyes sadden at the loss of contact. She smiled, the same shy smile she'd given him when she caught him staring. "Presents?"

He nodded, tossing the paper towel he was still holding into the sink. "I think we've sufficiently decorated our house. Now you can teach me the finer, girlier parts of wrapping presents properly."

Lindsay laughed. "There's no finer points, Messer. It's simply creativity."

He followed her back into his living room, watching her plop down by her bags and up-end one onto the floor. "Whose are those?"

She rifled through the objects, pairing mittens together and folding a knitted scarf. "This is the stuff for the team," she finally said, having separated everything into piles for their recipients.

"And yet you say mine isn't there."

"Neither is Mac's. I haven't finished his yet."

"Finished?"

She laughed. "All these gifts are hand-knitted," she explained, watching him lower himself so he was leaning against the bottom of the couch.

One of his eyebrows hit his hairline. "Hand-knitted? You don't know the city that well, where'd you find 'em?"

She smiled at his mistake, carefully tracing the triangle pattern on the mittens in her hand. "I made them."

He looked at the near-perfect stitching, the careful patterning and looked at her dubiously. "You made them?"

Lindsay nodded. "I don't do malls in December and its just easier to make something thoughtful instead of trying to find something to buy."

"So you knit instead?"

She shrugged. "Sewing is too much work by hand and knitting gives my hands something to do instead of just idling about."

"And you've made something for everyone in the lab?" Danny asked, surprise more than evident in his voice.

"No, that's too many people. That's why I had to buy things for people like Marty and Adam."

"You, Montana, are something special, you know that?"

She blushed and he decided he liked that look on her. "Thanks."

To dissipate some of the tension, he rubbed his hands together. "Let's start wrapping."

Okay, raise your hand if you thought they were actually going to kiss? Yeah, that's what I thought, sorry to break your hearts, but I have plans for their first kiss and its not in the middle of Danny's kitchen after he's wiped icing off of her nose.

I quite enjoyed writing the fluff in this one and probably almost had to get myself an insulin shot from the overdose of sugar, but I loved it. Hope you guys do too!!!