Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Woo-hoo! trustno1-1987, who posted the 500th review for this story, posted the 600th too! So, in her honour, there is another little mention of her passion.
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.
It's A Long Journey Home
Chapter 48: Want to Know A Secret
Listen, do you want to know a secret?
Do you promise not to tell?
O-oh, closer.
Let me whisper in your ear
She held her breath. She'd done it. Said the words she had said to no one since the bright spring day she had whispered them to a sweet young boy under a tree on the school grounds.
Cameron had just told her he was going to Montana State that fall, instead of going to California as he had planned. They had kissed, and she had told him she loved him, the first time those words had passed her lips in the months they had been going out.
He was gone that afternoon, horribly, grotesquely dead, and so was the innocent girl who had dreamed of young love under a tree budding with new spring life. Something kept going, something which looked and acted like that girl, but she was never quite the same.
So, Lindsay held her breath. She had never said those words to any other man not related to her, had never even thought them before. But here she was lying in Danny Messer's arms, still shaking from a bone-rattling orgasm, their limbs entangled, his head tucked against her, him still hard inside her. And the words just leaked out of her.
She didn't know much Italian, just enough to order pasta at a restaurant in New York and not get laughed at. But she was pretty sure Danny hadn't been spouting menu items. She recognized amo, innamorata, amore; any opera buff knew that much. He'd said he loved her before too, in New York. In Italian and English.
She held her breath, waiting for a response. Any response.
Now would be good.
Any time now.
He was heavy in her arms, his body relaxed and still. His breathing was soft and slow and …
He was asleep.
She didn't know whether to laugh, cry, curl up against him, or beat him senseless.
He turned his head into her, rubbing his nose against the curve of her breast and making a funny little snorting sound of satisfaction before his breathing dropped another notch and he was really out.
Her heart melted and she decided not to beat him to death.
There was a problem, though. They were lying on top of the covers, and although the bedroom was warming up a bit from the woodstove in the other room, the air was still cold enough that Lindsay was starting to shiver.
Another problem: the woodstove only had a few pieces of wood in it. She needed to build up the fire or it would go out.
Yet another problem: if she didn't get up and go pee really, really soon, she was going to have figure out how to wash and dry bed clothes in freezing weather with no washer or dryer.
She lay under the weight of Danny's body, testing to see if she could wiggle out from under him. With only one usable arm, and an ankle that really should still be braced, her maneuverability was pretty compromised. And for a reasonably little guy (compared to her family, anyway), he was heavy. Still, by slow easy stages, she managed to move her way to the side of the bed, then out, heaving a sigh of relief as she made it to the bathroom.
She was a little startled when she looked at herself in the mirror as she washed her hands. Her face was flushed, her lips were full and swollen, her eyes were languorous. She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly, conscientiously satisfied. She had never seen herself as sexy before; that was a title for movie stars and women like Stella Bonasera. She had always been the cute one: the serious, slightly geeky, but cute one. She didn't feel cute anymore.
She wasn't sure how she felt.
"Cold. I feel cold," she said under her breath, and pulled on the clothes she had left by the side of the bathtub. She didn't bother with the brace; the ankle hurt, but it wouldn't feel much better braced. As she slipped quietly through the bedroom into the main room of the cabin, she pulled the quilt over Danny, pausing for a moment to admire his sleek, naked frame. He was still breathing heavily, and other than replacing her body with a pillow, he didn't seem to have moved much. She grinned when she went to pull a sleeping bag over him as well; he had left the sleeping bags zipped up, presumably so that she wouldn't feel too much pressure about sharing the bed with him.
"I wonder what he would do if I tried to make him sleep on the floor." A sputter of laughter accompanied that thought.
Slowly, she made her way into the main room, and looked around. As she had remembered, the cabin was small: one room 24 feet wide with windows cut into two walls, and a wood stove standing in the middle, with a half wall separating out the bedroom and bathroom. She left the dividing door open so the heat would circulate through the whole building, and went to haul in more firewood.
She took a quick breath as she pulled open the front door; she hadn't bothered to pull on her coat and the wind was bitingly cold out there. She looked at the stack of wood on the porch; it would do for tonight, but was not going to be enough for even one more day. The main wood pile was several feet away; she could just see it through the swirling snow.
She grinned again at the thought of Danny cutting firewood; she was no good with an axe because she could only swing one arm over her head.
Grabbing as many pieces of firewood as she could, she stepped back into the room and carefully filled the woodbox of the stove. She knew too much would be dangerous; she had no interest in trying to put out a chimney fire. On the other hand, she had no interest in getting up through the night to feed the fire either, so she needed to stack the wood right, then close the dampers the precise amount so that the fire was still going by morning.
She found herself humming as she puttered around the kitchen. Funny, she was starving now, and the soup on the stove didn't take long to heat up. She cleaned one bowl and then another, using pieces of bread to sop up the reminder. As she ate, she put away the food that the Monroes had gathered up. Not wanting to alert anyone to the fact that someone was planning a trip by buying supplies in the local grocery store, the family had for the most part raided home freezers and fridges. Lindsay laughed at the variety of meals she and Danny would have to choose from: leftover stew from Carol, her sister-in-law; Mike's five-alarm chili, which he made up in huge batches, then ate for weeks at a time; and several meals from her mother, including curry, and at least four different casserole dishes. Diane Monroe had never quite got out of the habit of cooking for six plus assorted guests. Her freezer always looked like the place leftovers went to die.
Most of the containers Lindsay put in the freezer, choosing a few to go in the fridge to thaw for later. There was milk and coffee and tea, juice and bacon and eggs, staples for cooking and baking, and even a huge batch of her mother's famous chocolate chip with everything cookies. Lindsay grabbed one and bit into it, carrying it in her teeth as she hopped back to the sink to fill a kettle: tea sounded good.
As she turned with the full kettle, she ran into something warm, solid, and naked. Startled, she jerked her arm and Danny yelped as cold water coursed over his body, soaking the jeans that were the only thing he had put on when he woke up and found himself alone in the bed.
"Geez, Danny! I'm sorry! Are you okay?" She couldn't help the giggle, even though she tried to stifle it, spraying cookie crumbs over him as she bit through the one she was holding in her mouth. The rest of the cookie fell to the floor.
"Good thing it wasn't boiling," he growled, shaking water off his hands and reaching for the tea towel she had stuffed into the waistband of her jeans.
"I'm sorry, but you shouldn't sneak up on me." She squealed as he pulled her into his arms, but relaxed and put her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.
"I didn't sneak. I'm just naturally stealthy." He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, his hand rubbing her back. "You okay? I thought you'd go to sleep."
"As Marvin the Robot would say, 'I ache, therefore I am.' But otherwise …" She laughed at Danny's confused look, "Never mind. You'll need a crash course in Adams-ese at some point, I think!"
She cuddled into his arms a little closer, loving the contact, "I'm fine. I had to get the stove filled or it would go cold, and I was hungry, so I heated up the soup and then I thought I might as well put away the supplies and …" she stopped as he pulled her head up with a gentle hand under her chin to look at her with an amused smirk.
She sighed and laughed, "And I'm babbling. I'm just full of energy; I feel like I've been sleeping for days."
"There's a reason for that. Come and sit down. We should maybe talk."
"I'm just going to make tea. Do you want some?" She consciously kept her voice bright, turning away from him to refill the kettle.
"Naw, I'm good. Lindsay." His voice was determined. "Sit down and let me do that. Chris said you had to keep off that foot."
Unexpectedly, she did as he said, putting the kettle on the stove and then hobbling over to the couch. Her legs wouldn't hold her up. He had called her Lindsay. Not Montana, not Linds, not even Monroe. He only called her Lindsay under the grip of some serious emotion.
But from the look on his face, that serious emotion did not look like one she was ready to deal with.
A/N2: I missed the all-important episode, sleeping off several interesting narcotics, but caught up on the most significant moments thanks to sugah66 and you tube. Now that this story has obviously gone completely AU, should I keep going, or wrap up?