A/N: cyko and Boleyn - awesome. Spunky - not so much.

January 1, 2007
Flack threw up on me. I hate Flack.

I pull off my once-clean smelling shirt and throw it into my hamper. I'll deal with it later. For now, I need to stop smelling like vomit.

I step into the shower. Normally, I'm not a fan of really hot showers, but it's freezing outside, and I need some way to keep warm while naked. I take a second to adjust to the temperature before I start scrubbing.

My number one bad idea since October: Think about Lindsay while in the shower. This always ends badly.

Or good. Depends on how you look at it.

Fifteen minutes after going in, I step out of the shower. I vaguely remember the days before Lindsay, when I could shower in less than five minutes. Those were the days.

I wrap a towel around my waist. Did I mention that I hate Flack?

I grab my suit and dump it in my washing machine. The doorbell rings. And of course, I can't go back to my room to at least put on pants. So I have to answer the door naked. With just cloth hiding Little Danny from whoever was at the door.

I look in the peephole. Fuck. I need pants. No way the towel is going to hide her, uh, effect on me.

"Hey," I say, opening the door. Lindsay wipes away a tear.

She smells like vodka. No, excuse me. She reeks of vodka.

"Hey," she says. "I didn't know where else to go."

See, normally, at this point, I'd invite her in. But then I'd have to sit, or something. And that is not pleasant while wearing a towel in front of the girl of your dreams.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

She looks down. "I got a phone call from - Can we go inside? I don't really want to talk about this in the hallway."

Fuck. "Sure," I say, gesturing for her to sit down. "I'm gonna go change. Be right back."

I try to run to my bedroom. That's very difficult when wearing a towel.

I find an old Police Academy shirt and sweatpants and go back to my living room. "So what's wrong?" I ask, sitting next to her on the couch.

"Do you want to know what it was?" she asks quietly, staring at the floor.

"What...what was?"

"The thing," she says, meeting my eyes. "The thing I had to sort out."

"Oh." Duh. I replay that day in my head every single night. "Yeah. But if you don't want to tell me..."

"My mom," she starts, "was killed when I was fifteen. It was three in the morning. I got home an hour earlier from a date. I missed curfew, and I was just concentrating on getting up to my bedroom. So I didn't think to lock the door."

She wipes away another tear. "I went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up, and my mom was..."

She stops wiping the tears. "My mom was dead," she says. "Because of me."

I hate myself sometimes. I pull her into a hug. "I'm sorry, Lindsay," I whisper into her ear.

She finds a tissue box and blows her nose. "They never got the guy. Everyone knew who did it, though. The guy next door, James McDonald. They arrested him, and he went to jail. And everything was great, but then his attorney said that he found evidence that McDonald was sleeping with my mom."

She looks at her, her eyes starting to flare. "He wasn't, of course. It was just a shit way to get him off. That's when I left. I just couldn't take it."

I ask this carefully. "That was over a year ago, though. Why is that keeping you from being ready for a relationship a year later?"

"Because," she sighs, "a few days before...that day, I got a call from my old boss in Montana. He got out over the summer, which I knew. What I didn't know, what my boss told me, was that he's accused of killing someone else."

"That's a valid reason," I say quietly. Lindsay looks at me. I've never seen her like this; normally, she's so together, occasionally letting her emotions get ahead of her. But she's never looked like this - like the wrong move, the wrong words, will cause her to break.

"I didn't want to start something until that was all sorted out. I wanted him to be behind bars, where he belongs. That's understandable, right?"

I nod and start stroking her hair. "Lindsay, I understood from the beginning."

She smiles a little. "You're right. We can be friends."

I wrap my arm around her and pull her into my chest. "Yeah."

Yeah. I guess we can be friends. Until that whole thing with McDonald is sorted out, anyway. Right?