Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

A/N: Thank you so much to all my reviewers – this story has over 800 reviews as of yesterday! I am really honoured. I also appreciate all the people who are reading and following along with this adventure. I hope you all enjoy this next installment.

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 53: A Shoulder to Cry On

If the sun has faded away

I'll try to make it shine

There's nothing I won't do

When you need a shoulder to cry on

I hope it will be mine

Call me tonight, and I'll come to you

Danny carefully carried the mug of tea over to Lindsay on the couch, snagging a handful of cookies on his way. He sat on the coffee table in front of her, handing her the mug, which she wrapped her hands around.

"It's time, Lindsay," he said, looking at her with that intense look he brought to his work in the lab.

"Time? Are you going to share those or what?" She desperately wanted to keep this light.

He held the cookies out of her reach, but his serious look didn't change. "Not until we do this."

"Do what, Danny?" She was going to make a joke about them having done just about everything she knew about so far, but she thought it would fall miserably flat.

"I need to know what happened. I need to know what you've remembered, what you've figured out, what you know. We have to talk this through, just like any other case." He didn't take his eyes off her.

She sipped her tea, and looked into the milky liquid as if it held some kind of answers for her. "It's not any other case. It happened to me, Danny. I was in that room. I watched them die, all of them." Her voice disappeared.

Danny reached out a hand and gripped her knee, "I know, sweetheart. I know. And you can cry and scream and throw things at me while you do it, unless it's something hot," he added with a smile and a nod at the mug of tea she was gripping so hard her knuckles were white.

In spite of herself, Lindsay gave a watery smile.

"And it'll be hard. Lindsay, it's going to be hard. But as lovely as this place is," Danny glanced around the small cabin with a smirk, "And as much as I am looking forward to experiencing the joys of my first Montana snow storm, I want to go home. And I am hoping that you will be coming home with me."

She looked at him over the rim of her mug, eyes wide.

" 'Cuz I learned something over the past few days, Miss Monroe. New York wasn't home any more without you there."

"Danny…" her voice came out on a whisper.

"I'm not asking, Lindsay. Not yet. But you need to know. This – thing between us. Nothing else has ever come close for me."

Danny didn't move when Lindsay's eyes filled with tears. Shaking, she put her mug down on the floor, and reached her hands out to him. He let her pull him to the couch to sit beside her, but waited until she fit herself into the circle of his arms before he let himself relax and hold her the way he had been yearning to for so long it seemed to have originated with his first breath.

"This," she said, "Just this. This is home."

Neither knew how long they sat, wrapped in that magic circle. Long enough that Lindsay's tea grew cold. Long enough to hear a log burn through in the woodstove. Long enough that the storm which had been building outside began to bang and rattle against the windows.

Not long enough to feel it had been long enough.

Finally though, Lindsay stirred. "Danny, we need more wood."

"Hmm?"

"Danny."

"What?"

"You need to go get more wood for the woodstove. From the wood pile?" She had turned in his arms now and was laughing at him.

"Why me?"

She just looked at him, then quipped, "And they say chivalry is dead."

"Okay, Montana. Tell me what I am looking for." He sighed; the thought of even suiting up to go outside was definitely not appealing.

"Um, a big pile of wood?" She laughed when he glared at her. "What? I don't really know how else to describe this, Danny. It's a pile of wood about twenty feet from the door, between here and the car. Oh, and look for the axe; the wood probably hasn't been split."

"Let me guess. Chivalry again?"

She smiled at his disgruntled face and kissed him on the cheek. "But there are rewards."

He captured her mouth with his, swiftly taking the teasing note to a new level. How did he make her head spin so fast, she wondered.

His mouth moved down her throat, igniting a moan. She pushed him away, reluctantly.

"Danny…" she whispered.

"What? I'm just warming things up." His face was alight with mischief.

"You are very good at that. But I'm not sure even you can generate enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing."

"Want me to try?"

The growl was almost enough for Lindsay to give in, but she heard another log burn through in the stove and gave him a gentle shove. "Wood."

"Pretty damn close."

"Danny! Don't men ever grow up?"

He laughed and started to answer that ingenuous question, but she smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "Stop it now before you dig yourself a grave. I'm going to make you some coffee."

He groaned, but got off the couch, "And then we have things to talk about."

She suited him up like a knight on a quest, though instead of armour she helped him with sweatshirt, winter jacket, gloves, hat, scarf. "It's snowing heavily, Danny. No, listen to me!" She pushed his shoulder to get him to pay attention. "People get turned around in these storms all the time. Take this rope, and tie it to something when you get to the pile. It'll help you find your way back."

He looked at her askance, "Montana, I'm walking twenty feet. You really think I'm dumb enough to get lost in twenty feet? I know I'm a – what did you call me? City Boy? – but give me some credit, here!"

She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth. "Do what you're told. Every winter, people die a few feet from their houses. It's not too bad yet, but with the wind and the snow … Look, just humour me, would you?"

Once he got out in it, Lindsay's concern didn't seem quite so far-fetched. The wind was buffeting at him from all sides, and the best he could do was stop every foot or so, glance up to get his bearings, then walk another few steps with his eyes on the ground, squinting fiercely to see through the snow being driven into his face. The worst New York winter he had suffered through could not compare to this.

He made it, finally, to the wood pile, and tied the rope Lindsay had insisted he take to the fence post near the pile. Then he looked around for an axe, and found not only a big maul, but a handcart on skids, which he promptly filled with as much wood as he thought he could manage. By the time he had turned around to go back to the cabin, his footprints, clear as holes punched in white paper only a moment before, were completely obliterated, and if it hadn't been for the rope, he wouldn't have known even which direction to head in to return to Lindsay.

The trip back was even longer, and harder. The handcart was heavy, and the skids got caught often enough that he seriously began to wonder if he would be better off to abandon it. Then he thought about doing the whole trek again a couple times that day, swore a blue streak in Italian, English, and maybe a little Klingon, and slogged ahead.

Suddenly, the wind swept a clear path in the swirling snow, and when he looked up to get his bearings, he could see Lindsay, standing in an open door, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered, the cabin lights streaming from behind her. He stopped, awestruck, but only for a moment before the wind drove him forward again, and he practically fell into her arms as she hobbled out onto the porch and helped him up the last few steps to her.

"Hey, Montana! Next time let's go for a nice fire-breathing dragon, okay? This snow and ice thing really sucks." He grinned up at her weakly.

"Oh, God, Danny. You scared the living daylights out of me!" She was scolding him even as she gently unwrapped his frozen clothes and began warming his hands and face with her own.

"Hey, you sent me out there! You knew it wasn't going to be a stroll through Central Park, here," he protested.

"Twenty minutes. It took you twenty minutes." She stopped what she was doing and wrapped her arms around him, holding on to him as if to keep him safe from the storm.

He shrugged off the soaking coat and let it drop to the floor, his arms automatically fitting around her. He could get all too used to this position, he thought contentedly. "Good thing I had the rope. Girl Scout," he teased her, his voice warm with affection.

"Okay." She stepped away, and wiped her eyes. Honestly, she seemed to do nothing but cry around this man. "Are there any pieces small enough to use, or do I need to send you out there again?"

In spite of himself, Danny shivered at the thought. "I just grabbed what I could reach and loaded up the skid, there."

Lindsay grabbed her coat and started to hobble out, but Danny stopped her, scooping the coat back up from the floor. "Show me," he said shortly.

"Anything bigger around than this needs to be cut up." She held her hands about six inches apart.

"Got it." He went back out into the maelstrom, but was quickly back in with an armload of suitable pieces. "Build it up and get the cabin warm. I'll be a minute or two."

Lindsay started to speak, but Danny was a man on a mission, and he ignored her. With a shrug, she stoked up the fire and started the coffee. At least she had successfully stopped the whole case discussion.

Outside, she could hear Danny swearing as he chopped wood. She wanted to tell him to hit it hard in the centre: the wood was cold enough that one good hit would cause it to shatter, but then she heard his shout of triumph, "Boom! That's what I'm talking 'bout!"

She grinned. He'd figured it out.

She grabbed a cookie and went back to sit on the couch, where she could watch him through the small window. He was concentrating hard, pushing his glasses back up his nose after every hit, carefully measuring each new piece of wood, then rearing up with the maul, letting it fall heavily down, and shouting when the log fell to pieces. He got through most of the wood he had brought over from the pile in an impressively short time, stripping off the coat as he worked. Lindsay had to admit it was no hardship to watch him, muscles straining, sweat running off him in beads, but a grin from ear to ear. Pure testosterone.

She sipped the cup of coffee she had fixed herself – it had smelled too good to pass up for tea – and asked herself why she was so reluctant to talk through the case with Danny. She always talked through her cases with Danny. Even when they were irritated with each other, sometimes especially when they were irritated with each other, their minds seemed to jangle and spark together. She thought better when he was there to mock, to coax, to question, to challenge her. So why not work this like a case?

The answer was surprisingly simple. He had offered her, again, unconditional support and comfort, a shoulder to cry on.

And damn, but she was tired of crying in front of Danny.

She narrowed her eyes as Danny picked up one last, huge log, and looked at it consideringly. He tested it, turned it, flipped it the other way over, then raised the maul and brought it down just off the centre. The maul bounced, jarring him. Lindsay winced at the shock to his arms; she had done that in her time.

He scowled, shook out first one arm, then the other, moved the log, and hit it again. It resisted him again. This time, he raised a hand to his jaw; obviously he had made the mistake of clenching his teeth before trying this bad boy again.

"One more time," Lindsay found herself thinking. "If it can resist him one more time, so can I. If he doesn't break it this time, I can deal with this as a mature adult, a forensic specialist, an expert witness, not a traumatized little girl. Fail one more time, Danny Messer, and I know I can beat you too."

He squatted down to look at the log, probing a narrow crack that had split down one side. He laid the log lengthwise on the porch, that crack facing up. He glanced around and found a smaller axe, one Lindsay had planned to use to split kindling if she made the mistake of letting the fire go out. He dropped the hand axe into the crack, then tapped it with the maul, patiently using it as a wedge to break the log in two, exposing a huge knot in the centre which had been resisting the brute force he had used before. He looked up into the window, his cheeks creased in a smile of satisfaction, and showed her the pile of split, stacked wood.

Lindsay smiled back a little weakly, and rested her head on her hand. "Resistance is futile," she whispered.