TITLE: Extreme Sensitivity… as a total fabrication. (1/?)
PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Women’s Murder Club does not belong to me. The characters do not belong to me. They are the property of James Patterson, 20th Century Fox Television and ABC. I have no problems with that as long as I can borrow them for short bursts and use them in pursuit of my own enjoyment. I am not trying to infringe. Though, I don’t know why anyone has a problem with fan fic. After all, it really is a compliment. If anyone wants to write fan fiction about my book, feel free.

(Lindsay’s POV)

Cindy had a black eye.

She was hiding it beneath large, gaudy, celebrity-style glamour sunglasses that were all wrong on her, but Lindsay was paying close enough attention that every time Cindy turned her head, she caught the edges of the bruising.

On impulse, she grabbed Cindy by the arm, holding one finger up to Jill and Claire in a ‘we’ll be right back’ fashion, and dragged Cindy through the crowded station and into an interrogation room, where she was forcibly, but not roughly, put down in a chair.

“What did I do now?” Cindy whined.

Lindsay stayed right at her side, fearing that her subject would run away with a swiftness given the opportunity.

“Take off your sunglasses,” she ordered.

Where, in Lindsay’s perfect scenario, there would have been instant sunglass removal, Cindy merely squirmed with telltale nervousness.

“I can’t.”

“Are they glued to your face?”

“No,” Cindy replied, actually nervy enough to let a scoff leak into her tone. “I have photophobia.”

“You’re afraid of pictures?”

Cindy looked up with what Lindsay could only assume was a small glare from inside the big black bug eyes.

“Extreme sensitivity to light,” Cindy educated her.

“Really?” Lindsay didn’t know whether to be irritated or amused. “Since when?”

“It can come on at any time. Lots of medications cause it.”

Since Cindy was right on the edge of her sputtering, “I will prove this lie to you no matter what I have to do” style of argument, Lindsay was definitely leaning in the direction of amusement.

“Excellent,” she replied simply. “I love learning new things. And I’m glad to hear you’ve been reading a medical encyclopedia. Now take off your sunglasses.”

“Lindsay, I really don’t see why you would force me to take them off when I’ve already told you…”

While Cindy continued to think that she stood a chance of talking her way out of it, Lindsay reached out, pulled the sunglasses from her face, and set them on the table in front of her, placing her hand beneath Cindy’s chin to pull her face back up when Cindy instantly tried to look away.

“Nice shiner. Where’d you pick that up?”

“Rio. I like to pick up all my black eyes in South America. It’s one of the few places left with a favorable exchange rate.”

And now, apparently, onto Cindy’s smartass argument technique. If that’s how Cindy wanted to play it, fine. She had a few methods of her own that always seemed to work on her fidgety friend.

Lindsay just smiled down at her target, before walking around the table and taking a seat. She leaned back in her chair and stared at Cindy. Just stared. Unflinchingly. If necessary, she could have done it for hours, but, unsurprisingly, it took only a couple of minutes.

“Alright!” Cindy shouted as if she were actually being interrogated. “I might have been in a bar fight.”

Lindsay laughed, but the way that Cindy bit her lip and averted her eyes was testament that she was telling the truth, and the laughter died on her lips. She pushed up in her chair, leaning forward across the table.

“You got into a bar fight?”

“Don’t be mad,” Cindy pleaded.

“How in the hell did you get into a bar fight?”

“I didn’t get into a bar fight. Not really. I was just kind of there when it started.”

“And you were there because?”

“Research.”

“And you were there alone because?”

“Because that’s how I do all of my research.”

“That’s right. Of course,” Lindsay muttered. “You always rush off into dangerous situations on your own. That’s how you do research.”

“It wasn’t exactly a dangerous situation,” Cindy defended herself, sounding, in Lindsay’s opinion, a little cocky now. “It was just a bar.”

Lindsay crossed her arms, shook her head, and looked away. The reporter was never going to learn. That’s all there was to it. And while she could lock her up any time she wanted, she would need help keeping her there for an extended period, and she somehow doubted she could get Jill to indict Cindy on a charge of “arrogance to the point of personal injury,” though it would be absurdly easy to prove. Regardless, with or without Jill’s help, the next time Cindy did pull something that was a punishable offense, Lindsay was going to make the absolute most of it.

“Lindsay?”

The soft call pulled her from her thoughts.

“What?” she sighed.

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

She didn’t have a right to be mad. Cindy was a grown woman who did, however, have the right to go into a bar whenever she felt the urge. She should probably just be grateful that Cindy had gone in looking for information instead of other things. Not that it would have, in any way, been her business if Cindy had gone looking for those things readily available in a bar setting.

“But you know,” she heard herself saying, which was interesting, because she hadn’t actually planned to keep talking, “you don’t always have to do your research alone.”

“I do actually. I don’t have an assistant. You have to have a little more clout for that. Or be a magician,” Cindy quipped.

Lindsay smiled. She couldn’t help it. The damn girl always did that. She would try to be all in command and intimidating, and then Cindy just had to go and use her considerable charms to end her badass charade with a whimper.

“Be that as it may, you shouldn’t be going off to a place that has even potential danger by yourself.”

“I didn’t know it had potential danger. Sometimes I do, but this time it really was just your standard, unexpected, stupidity-laden bar fight. I just happened to be present and get in the way of someone’s fist.”

And it looked like it. A big someone, Lindsay suspected, with a really mighty right hook.

“Are you pressing charges?”

“Nah. Seems like a lot of work. They were pretty apologetic. I could have chugged my weight in free beer if I’d wanted.”

Lindsay imagined that was a possibility any given night of the week without Cindy having to take a punch first.

“Hurts, huh?” she asked, examining the eye.

“It doesn’t feel good.”

And now Cindy actually had her feeling sympathetic about the whole thing.

“Listen, even if you don’t know if it’s an unsafe situation, if it seems risky…,” she fumbled slightly, not entirely sure why. “If you need backup… you can always call me.”

“Okay,” Cindy said slowly, her brows furrowing slightly in confusion.

Lindsay understood that, because she was slightly confused herself. What was she trying to say exactly? She was rather busy with her own work. It’s not like she would just drop everything in the middle of a homicide investigation to rush off and help Cindy go do story research. Would she?

Of course, if she was in the middle of a homicide investigation, she could pretty much be assured of Cindy’s location, stuck firmly to her side where she could get the inside scoop, so, the probability of ever having to make a choice between finding a killer and aiding Cindy was comfortingly slim.

When she glanced across the table again, she was met with the same overly inquisitive look she saw on Cindy’s face whenever she thought she was onto something that could be potentially mind-blowing. It made Lindsay surprisingly uneasy to be on the receiving end of it.

“We should get back to the case,” she announced suddenly, jumping up.

“Agreed,” Cindy returned much more evenly.

The fact that Cindy was so calm was really frustrating to her for some reason. But then Cindy lifted the sunglasses off of the table, twisting them back and forth between her fingers, and glanced up at her. She seemed to decide that she wasn’t going to get in trouble again, and returned the glasses to her face.

Lindsay laughed lightly as Cindy got to her feet and walked out the door, once again utterly disarmed by the redhead’s easygoing antics.

Wait.

Disarmed?

When the hell did that happen?