Disclaimer: Still own nothing.

AN: SPOILERS!!! I would like to reiterate that while I did read some spoilers, they were vague and incomplete, so I've taken what I have read and heard and mixed it with this fictional story.

He was tired.

Holding the jar of stomach contents that Sid had so generously bestowed upon him and making his way into the lab, Danny wondered why he chose to do this work when so many times it had knocked him down. First Aidan getting fired, Louie, Flack being hospitalized, the drug bust aftermath, and now this. Now Reuben. Reuben, the seven-year-old boy he sometimes played mentor to. Gone. Taken. By a single bullet.

Blue eyes strayed to a section of the lab as he walked, catching sight of a brown-haired head peeking over a black office chair and unbidden, a lurch of guilt enveloped him. Lindsay. His Lindsay. Recently, his confused Lindsay. Damn, what was he doing?

Danny thought back to the past few days. It had hurt so much when he found out that little Reuben had been shot. Kid had done nothing wrong, just walked outside. And some bastard ended it for him. He remembered how distraught Reuben's mother, Rikka, had been. The two had been neighbors and acquaintances for some time and being a single mother, Danny knew how appreciative she was that her son had found a positive male influence.

It was his fault. He should have been able to do something to prevent this. Could have. Would have. Should have. They were useless now. Another regret to add to the mess in Danny Messer's life.

He remembered the night he had gone home after solving the case and catching the asshole that did this. He'd made to walk into his apartment, intent on getting familiar with a dozen bottles of beer or perhaps something stronger when a meek voice called out to him.

Spinning around and catching sight of Rikka, disheveled, standing there, face drenched in tears, big green eyes filled with pain and despair, shaking and clutching tightly to a bedraggled teddy bear. One that he remembered Reuben petulantly denying sleeping with. Danny nearly lost it then and there.

She'd asked if she could come in, said her apartment had too many reminders, and that she needed to be with someone who understood what she was going through. Wordlessly, he opened the door for her.

The bottles of beer in his fridge were ignored in favor of coffee, knowing he wouldn't be going to sleep anytime soon. To be able to close his eyes and not see Reuben's body on the cold metal slab in the morgue. They'd sat on his couch, not saying much, knowing that there wasn't much to say, and bathed in each other's pain and sorrow.

Rikka's tears had come fast and hard with incoherent anguished mumbles of her baby boy and how he'd never...He'd never because he was gone. Latching onto Danny with the heartache only a mother would understand, he'd held her until the tears stemmed, pain receding, but not forgotten. A few tears of his own had slipped out when he inhaled the scent of the teddy bear in Rikka's arms.

A smell his mind automatically associated with Reuben. A unique smell. One-of-a-kind. Memories of the two playing ball, having manly chats, a pat on the back when Reuben proudly displayed work from school with a gold sticker for excellent work. Danny had shed more tears.

The kiss was not sudden. He'd seen it coming. The two had stared at each other before their lips met. For once, it wasn't his libido responding, but the grief connecting the two that prodded the two into taking their clothes off.

Overwhelmed with the longing to feel something else, anything else, the two wildly made their way to his bedroom where they took each other in a frenzy.

No soft kisses, gentle touches. No whispered words or tender caresses. Just fast, frantic, and hard. Anything to assuage the pain, the grief.

The two didn't speak after it was over. They had clung to each other in his bed, afraid that the despair would come back in their sleep.

And in the light of day, this day, not then, but now, Danny felt more than a twinge of guilt in that Lindsay, his Lindsay, hadn't even crossed his mind.

He'd had to leave for work early, a murder uptown, and he'd left Rikka curled up in his bed, arms around a teddy bear, the stress clearly lining her face even in sleep. Danny had written her a note saying that they had to talk, left a spare key, and walked numbly out of his apartment.

Danny had made it through his shift in a numbed stupor, going through the motions; his mind not fully there and was thankful when there were no new cases to catch him on the way out.

Rikka was gone from his apartment when he arrived. A new note had replaced his explaining that she had gone to see her parents and that she would see him later that night. His bed had been made up and their coffee cups rinsed and stacked.

Danny's mind had not really registered when Lindsay had shown up. Not really aware of his curt voice and abruptness. At that moment, much to his shame now, thoughts of Lindsay had not been in his mind, much less the forefront of it. He was a mess and he had to muddle his way back through it to the surface, in order to breathe properly again. Work through it the only way Danny Messer knew how: one step at a time. Lindsay standing on his doorstep that night had been in his way to finding his sanity again.

So he had dismissed her. At that moment, he hadn't cared what she thought or felt. Too concerned with his own emotional turmoil.

Rikka had shown up only an hour later, looking slightly better and on her own road to finding balance. They had talked. About Reuben, about his own guilt, about what she was going to do now, and about last night.

And both agreed that it was just something that happened. She was grieving, as was he. Both decided that it was a one-time thing, never to happen again and he still planned to go to the funeral with her. They parted ways with Rikka heading back to her own apartment to pack a few things and leaving to stay with her parents.

Only then did thoughts filter into his mind, the consequences of what he'd done replacing his self-condemnation over being unable to stop Reuben's death with guilt over what this was going to do with his budding relationship with Lindsay.

Danny shook his head before looking around him in the present time. Somehow his feet had led him to a lab where he had been sitting on a stool, staring at jar of stomach contents for who knows how long.

Thinking back to Lindsay sitting in their office, he felt his body sag in despair. She was sitting there, completely oblivious to his betrayal of her. Danny's blue eyes slid shut in remorse as he imagined only too clear the hurt in her beautiful brown eyes when he told her. And he would have to. Danny Messer was a lot of things, but he owned up to his mistakes and he owed it to her to be honest. God, this was one conversation he was not looking forward to.

Danny did not want to mess this thing he had with her. Not after waiting so long. They were finally getting to a place where he could almost begin to really open up and share tidbits of his life with her. Did he love her? Danny didn't think so, but did he care about her? An unequivocal hell yes. A lot. And already he had screwed up bad and because of that, he was now avoiding her. He hadn't talked to her since that night he coldly brushed her off.

His relationship with Lindsay wasn't solid. Even though they'd known each other for a little over two years, half of that was spent in a mixture of resentment for coming in and replacing Aiden and subtle flirting, followed by her sudden shut-down and his being left in the dark, struggling to maintain a normality around her that he didn't feel. Something had changed during the Ice Princess case and they were only getting it back now. But this...this thing...they had, it could go places. Places unknown and slightly scary to a former playboy like him, but places that with Lindsay, he wanted to go.

Giving himself a slight shake, he stood up. Introspective thoughts like his had no place at work With jar still in hand, Danny headed to talk to Adam about the trace he'd gathered at the crime scene

It was much later, the sun was starting to set, though still light out, when Danny managed to find a chance to step into his shared office, only to find Lindsay gone. He shrugged, not all that much in a hurry to confess his mistake to her, wanting to prolong any more tears when a post-it note on his computer screen caught his eye.

-- D,

Hey, we work in the same office, but keep missing each other. What's up with that :) Anyway, in case we do keep missing each other...I hope you're alright. Can't help but worry about your city-boy butt. Call me.

-- L
And there it was. His first real smile in the past few days. Lindsay's voice in his mind. Even though things had been rough lately, it didn't take much effort to bolster his spirit by recalling her one-thousand-watt smile and sparkling eyes as she teased him about his non-existent love-handles. Her country-girl to his city-boy.

"Hey Stella," he called out as the curly-haired woman strode past. "You seen Lindsay around?"

"Uh, no," she answered back. "Not since this morning anyway. Although I do recall her following Mac to his office a while back. Maybe she's out on a case." She shrugged and walked off, hunting for Hawkes, her partner in their case.

Danny nodded absently, rubbing the back of his neck and pondering what to do. He had wrapped up his

case, open and shut case of a robbery gone wrong resulting in a single death and the murderer now resting safely in jail. It was nearing six and the end of his shift. Lindsay, he had checked, was due off the clock at nine, but if she was on a new case, overtime was imminent.

At that moment, his cell rang and a recently familiar number was displayed on the lit screen. A frown passed over Danny's face. He hadn't talked to Rikka since the funeral. Thinking of her now brought on an air of unease.

"Hello?"

"Hey Danny," her voice was slightly loud in order to be heard over the traffic and other street noises.

"Hey Rikka." Danny shut the office door and sat slightly on Lindsay's desk, facing the hallway. For some odd reason, he wanted to keep a look-out for Lindsay and quickly end this conversation before she came, if she did. "How are ya doing?"

A slight shudder of breath as if to hold in a flood of tears and she responded, "I-I'm good. Doing well. Still staying with my parents, but I'm working through it. You?"

He nodded even though she couldn't see him. "Doing good. Doing good. What uh, what can I help you with?"

"Can-can I talk to you? I...I need to tell you something. Are you busy right now?"

Unable to help it, agitation reared up in him. Something in her voice did not bode well. "Nah. I can meet you. Are you at your apartment?" Please say no, please say no.

"No, um, actually I'm at the Starbucks a few blocks away from your workplace. You know, the one next to the glassware store Dacey's?"

Danny's eyebrows rose. What was she doing near his work? The alarm rose. "Yea', I know that one. I can be there in a couple of minutes, alright?"

Rikka paused. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be here. Thanks Danny."

Danny shut his cell phone and looked at the clock. Six. It was a simple meeting. Nothing to worry about.

So why did his body feel like running?

AN: In case you missed it, this is still the same day, but from Danny's side.