A/N: To sum things up, I suck, cyko and Boleyn rule.
December 30, 2006
"Here, Montana," I say, handing her a disco ball. "Can you hold that for a second?"
She laughs at me as I climb up the ladder. "You're hanging a disco ball for our New Year's party," she says in disbelief.
She hands me the disco ball. I start drilling it into the ceiling. "Yes. Why not? Are you saying that disco balls aren't cool?"
"Maybe in 1976," she snorts. I see her steal a soda from the fridge.
"Hey, those are for tomorrow!" I say. She smiles angelically at me.
"So," I say, checking the disco ball to see if it's tight, "who are you kissing at midnight?"
She chokes a little on her soda. "What? We're, uh, doing that? But we're coworkers." She stops for a second. "All of us, I mean. Not just you and me."
I start climbing down. "I know what you meant, Montana," I say, rolling my eyes a little. I'm kind of sick of this. She won't say anything around me that I could construe as "flirting." So basically, that leaves all case talk.
But sometimes, like now, the old Lindsay will slip through. The one who used to flirt with me. The one who would start a conversation about phone sex. The one who made me fall in love with her personality. Not this new, professional Lindsay.
She blushes. "So people are kissing at midnight? That's not really fair. Two girls, four guys. And assuming you'd mark your territory on me, and God knows the only person Stella would ever even consider kissing is Mac, that leaves Hawkes and Flack to kiss each other."
I chuckle. "You wouldn't want to see that?" Lindsay laughs and shakes her head.
"You could not pay me enough money." I reach the bottom rung of the ladder. As I step off, Hawkes opens the door, hitting the ladder, and knocking me off. I fall backwards and hit my head on the table. As I fade into darkness, the last thing I see is the disco ball.
---
As I open my eyes, everything is white. The one person who stands out is Lindsay, wearing all red.
"Lindsay," I say, suddenly crying. She floats toward me.
"Danny," she says. She pulls me into a hug.
"I love you," I whisper into her shoulder. I can feel her smile.
"I love you too, Danny. But remember what I said? Just a little longer. Everything is almost back to normal."
For some reason, that makes me cry harder. "I just want to be with you so much. Who cares about that other thing? Me and you, that's what's important."
We pull apart. Lindsay starts stroking my cheek. "Danny, listen to me. I know this is hard. But it's going to get easier. Things between us are already better than they were after that day. We're becoming friends again. And sure, we love each other. But we're learning how to deal with it."
"Can you just," I choke out, "tell me why we can't be together? What's that problem of yours?"
She shakes her head sadly.
"Danny?"
---
"Danny?"
I open my eyes. Lindsay is above me, feeling my head. She looks like an angel.
"Lindsay?" I say in a voice that's much too dreamy to be my own. "You look so pretty..."
"Thank you," she says, still making sure I'm OK. "Either your head is really misshapen, or you've got a huge bump on the back of your head."
I reach up to feel it. Now that the initial feeling of confusion has passed, I can feel my head throbbing with pain. "Son of a bitch. What did that? Wait - where are we?" I sit up. "Are we at a crime scene? Are you OK?"
Ow. I sat up too fast.
Lindsay cups my cheeks. "No, Danny, we're at work. You fell off the ladder and hit your head. Are you OK?"
Oh. Right.
I smile sheepishly. "Yeah. I'm fine. My head hurts, though." A hand appears in front of me, holding a glass of water and two Advil. Hawkes.
I swallow them and slowly stand up, Lindsay holding onto my arm. "But on the bright side," she says, "we got the break room decorated for the party tomorrow."
I look around, a smile forming on my face. "Yeah. It looks great."
We had turned the place into a winter wonderland. The windows were covered with that fake-snow spray stuff, all flat surfaces were covered with white felt. The disco ball, which would seem out of place, was reflecting the white, making it seem like it was snowing.
"I guess it does fit," Lindsay says quietly.