TITLE: Extreme Sensitivity… as a deviation from the average, everyday. (2/?)
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.

(Cindy’s POV)

“Okay, so these two…”

“Floaters.”

Cindy grimaced at Lindsay’s choice cop word.

“Kids,” she chose to use instead. “Their bodies washed up on the beach, and you aren’t going to end up investigating this as a homicide why?”

“Because there were missing persons reports filed on both of them a few days ago. Their parents had forbidden them from seeing each other. They ran away,” Lindsay relayed, watching the crew work the location before her. “In five minutes, Claire will give her initial report that they died of accidental drowning, which is no surprise. Another team is looking at debris washed up about a mile down, probably pieces of their boat.”

“So… what? They stole a motorboat and thought they’d try for Asia?”

“We think it’s a rowboat actually, and it was Hawaii. It would have been quite the feat if they’d made it, huh? By the time the investigators got it out of the girl’s friends and sent a search party, there was no trace. Since then, everyone’s just been waiting for them to either get in touch or wash ashore.”

Cindy felt a lump rise into her throat at the straightforward depiction of events.

“God, that’s so sad,” she uttered quietly.

“Makes for a better story though, doesn’t it?” Lindsay teased with a smirk.

“That’s true,” Cindy acknowledged. “But it’s still sad.”

“I agree,” Lindsay replied softly.

The truncated concurrence came as such a surprise, Cindy found herself leaning in and listening more intently than usual.

“If they’d waited a couple of years,” Lindsay continued her thought as Cindy knew she would, “their parents would have had no say in the matter and they would have been less prone to the rash decisions that got them both killed.”

Cindy stared at the side of Lindsay’s face, bathed in alternating red and blue flashes. What was she really expecting to hear from her? Some kind of poetic analogy about love lost?

“I actually meant it was sad that they felt like that was their only option,” she clarified on the more emotionally-stunted inspector’s behalf.

“Should something like this ever actually be considered an option?” Lindsay tossed at her.

“I don’t know, Linds. A choice between life and love, I wouldn’t want to make that decision.” She paused in gloomy consideration of a situation where such a choice would seem necessary, and then remembered who it was that she was talking to. “I guess it’s lucky for you you’d never have to worry about something like that.”

Lindsay snapped her head from Claire zipping one of the teenagers into a body bag to turn her direction so fast, Cindy nearly ducked.

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lindsay snapped.

“Nothing,” Cindy tried for casual. “Just… it’s not your thing.”

“It’s not my thing?” Lindsay asked in disbelief, and Cindy prayed silently for some form of intervention to get her out of the jam she’d just created.

After five seconds, in which lightning didn’t strike and no one needed Lindsay’s assistance enough to call her away, Cindy realized with a suppressed shudder that she was actually going to have to respond in the glare of that irritated expression.

“Yeah,” she said lightly. “It’s not your thing.”

With a vexed scoff, Lindsay shook her head and walked off, deeper into the crime scene, where she probably thought she couldn’t be followed.

“What just happened?” Cindy asked herself in a whisper. “Lindsay. Lindsay!”

With a quick glance around, she bowed beneath the police tape and jogged to catch up to the considerably longer-legged woman, seizing her leather-clad arm.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Lindsay threw back at her in that same disbelieving tone. “You hurt my feelings.”

With some degree of shock, Cindy’s eyes moved amongst the officers watching them, surprised that Lindsay would utter the word feelings out in the open in front of people who had the ability to hear.

“Really?” she questioned, stepping in closer.

This should have been a secret. Shouldn’t it?

“Yes!” Lindsay hotly retorted. “I do have them.”

“I know that,” Cindy lowered her voice, hoping her very agitated friend would follow suit. “How exactly did I hurt them?”

“Lucky for me, I’d never have to worry about that? What, like, I could never fall in love that way, where I’d throw everything away to run off with the person?”

Lindsay’s voice still wasn’t normal, but it wasn’t quite the bellowing decibel it had been before.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Cindy soothed.

“So, do you think I could?” Lindsay challenged.

Cindy went mannequin-still at the question. Did Lindsay really have to ask so directly? Couldn’t they skate around the subject? That always seemed to work better for them.

“Well?” Lindsay prodded when she took too long in responding.

“I uh… I…”

“Any day now.”

“I doubt it,” Cindy declared in reaction to the provocation, and immediately regretted saying it.

Lindsay’s annoyed look faded into something much more neutral and unreadable.

“I was young once you know. Like you. Starry-eyed and idealistic and romantic,” Lindsay informed her. “In fact, I could still do it now.”

Cindy was buying it up until that last part.

“Lindsay,” she said with a dismissive laugh. “Come on.”

Fire flashed through the eyes looking down at her, and Lindsay turned and stomped off in such a total and absolute huff – there was really no other way to describe it – that Cindy was too afraid to follow her over to Claire. She looked for somewhere to put herself out of harm’s way, and honed in on Jill, standing at the edge of the crime scene, flirting so transparently with a uniformed cop, it was like walking up to a dating show.

“Hey. What’s up?” Jill happily broke from her flirting to acknowledge Cindy’s approach.

“Lindsay’s mad at me.”

If she had a dollar for every time she’d uttered that phrase…

“Why? What did you do?”

“Why do you just assume I did something?” Cindy mocked offense.

Jill just gave her usual head tilt and waited. It was her cue. This conversation never altered much. Sometimes Jill would throw a ‘now’ onto the end of her last question, and Cindy’s answer could vary between “I got arrested again” or “I interviewed a suspect when she told me not to.” Not this time.

“I hurt her feelings apparently.”

“How’d you do that?” Jill was as surprised by the revelation as Cindy had been.

“I just made reference to her level-headedness,” Cindy told her. “I actually thought it was something she took pride in.”

“What did you say?”

“That she wouldn’t try taking a rowboat to Hawaii to escape with someone if, for some reason or another, she couldn’t be with that person. Was I wrong?”

“Well, you weren’t exactly tactful, but her reaction still seems extremely sensitive.” Jill stopped short, laughing suddenly in remembrance of something. “The other day I told her I was going to buy her a litter of cats now, so she could just stop worrying about it.”

“And how’d she react?”

“She bought me a beer and we started talking about a case.”

“Wait. What you said was so much worse!” Cindy complained. “Why did I get in trouble?”

“Bad timing?” Jill submitted with an uncertain shrug.

“I guess so.” Cindy sighed, glancing over to where Lindsay was talking to Claire, feeling a very heartfelt guilt stirring.

“I need to get back to the office and get this story written. Could you do me a favor?” She took the curiously raised eyebrow as a yes. “Will you call me when you find out just how mad she is at me?”

Jill bestowed her with a dazzling, and rather humored, grin.

“Don’t I always?”