TITLE: A Conversation with Jill About a Hypothetical Person Who May or May Not Exist
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. (Well, not anymore. Jackasses.) 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.

“Hey Jill. ‘Sup? You havin’ a good mornin’?” Lindsay swept through Jill’s open office door, plopping herself down in one of the faux leather chairs with a flourish.

“It hasn’t been a bad morning,” Jill answered slowly, eyeing the paper cup of caffeinated sugar teetering in Lindsay’s unsteady hand. “How many of those have you had today?”

“Three. Double shots,” Lindsay divulged, downing a quarter of the cup in one swallow, and emerging with a big smile.

“Wow,” Jill uttered. “Do you have a hangover or something?”

“No, I’m fine,” Lindsay rapid-fired back at her. “Don’t I seem fine?”

“Ummmm,” Jill hesitated, watching Lindsay fidget before her, and noting, with a rather sick enjoyment, the brisk, repetitive tapping of Lindsay’s foot on the floor. “What’s going on, Linds?”

“Why does something have to be going on?” Lindsay returned anxiously. “Can’t I just be craving a little girl talk?”

“I guess you can,” Jill answered doubtfully, watching Lindsay as she tossed back the rest of her drink and lobbed the empty cup in her trashcan. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsay shrugged. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Uh… ‘kay,” Jill responded, taking a deep breath. “Have you talked to Pete yet?”

Lindsay sniggered at the inquiry. “No.”

“Is that funny?” Jill asked in confusion.

Considering it for a moment, though the way her mind was racing made it difficult to formulate any firm thoughts, Lindsay frowned slightly. “No. I guess not. But let’s not talk about him.”

Hands spreading in surrender, as if she didn’t know what Lindsay wanted her to segue into, Jill blew out a breath. “I don’t have anything for you, Linds.”

“Fair enough,” Lindsay bobbed her head unevenly. “I’ll go then.”

“Good,” Jill replied.

“Let’s do hypotheticals,” Lindsay promptly began.

Looking intently across her desk, Jill gave Lindsay a deliberate nod to continue.

“Let’s say,” Lindsay paused as if inventing the scenario on the spot, “you were interested in someone in a, you know, romantic kind of way. And also, you know, um, maybe sexually…”

“Right,” Jill encouraged. “I’ve been known to be interested in people that way.”

“Let’s say that you didn’t realize you were into them… like that. Or maybe, subconsciously, you sort of did, but you refused to, you know, let it surface,” Lindsay gradually slowed down with each word. “What would you do about something like that?”

“I’d tell Cindy how I felt about her,” Jill didn’t miss a beat.

Lindsay’s ensuing laugh was considerably more panic than amusement.

“Cindy?” she scoffed. “Who said anything about Cindy?”

“You did,” Jill softly responded.

“No I didn’t,” Lindsay vehemently denied. “We’re doing hypotheticals. I have no part in this. And Cindy is definitely not the other part.”

Feeling instantly nervous when Jill set back in the confident ‘gotcha’ pose she only used when she really did have someone, Lindsay wasn’t sure if she was shaking from the high dosage of caffeine or the nervous tension. Wishing she hadn’t wandered into Jill’s office in a slightly altered mental state, if she thought for a second she had the ability to walk a straight line, she would have made a break for the door.

“Remember the night you let me stay at your apartment because you thought I was too drunk to drive back to Claire’s?” Jill calmly asked.

“Yeah,” Lindsay whispered, almost afraid to answer.

“Well, I woke up in the middle of the night,” Jill leisurely said, letting the statement linger long enough that Lindsay’s foot tapping recommenced at an even more breakneck pace. “That tends to happen when I have that much to drink.”

Jittery and unnerved, Lindsay waited for Jill to finish the story, unable to continue being patient when an entirely too calculating smirk worked its way onto Jill’s features.

“Was there a point to this story, or did you just want to tell me the ins and outs of your urinary tract?”

Too pleased at her position of control, Jill chuckled lightly.

“When I got up, I heard strange noises from your bedroom,” Jill informed her in the style of a bad film noir voiceover. “Slowly, I opened your bedroom door. And you were in bed. Alone.”

“You watched me sleep?” Lindsay asked in disbelief.

“As far as I could tell, you weren’t doing a lot of sleeping,” Jill returned cheekily.

Even through her manic caffeine frenzy, Lindsay knew that she was being baited. She knew that the best course of action was to say nothing and not allow Jill to finish. Because, when Jill was that anxious to tell her something, she could trust it wouldn’t be anything innocent. But like a great and stupid swordfish swimming through the sea of life, she bit.

“What was I doing?” she asked feebly, much to Jill’s delight.

“There was some moaning and writhing,” Jill stated cheerfully. “Excessive sweating. Hands clutching at sheets. Oh, and the frequent ‘Cindy, oh God, Baby, yesses.’ Those were my favorite.”

Eyes going impossibly wide, Lindsay clutched painfully to the arms of the chair to steady herself.

“No I…” she wavered. “How long were you watching me?”

“A little while,” Jill admitted, shaking her head at Lindsay’s scowl. “What? At first, I thought you were awake, doing whatever it is that you do by yourself in your bedroom at night. By the time I realized you were asleep, and it may have technically been an invasion of your privacy, the show was too good to turn away from.” Jill popped into therapist mode. “So, how long have you been having sex dreams about Cindy?”

There was a denial right there, trapped behind her teeth. She tried to force it out, but when she finally opened her mouth, the wrong thing came spilling forth.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “A while.”

Jill’s smirk turned into a bona fide grin, stretching all the way across her face and showing quite a few pearly whites. It really wasn’t her intention to make Jill giddy with knowledge. She’d just come in for some simple, innocuous advice. Not to confirm things Jill didn’t need to be knowing in the first place.

“And you can’t stay with me anymore,” Lindsay huffily added.

“Too late with that threat,” Jill teased. “I have my own place now. Remember? So, when are you planning to say something to her?”

“I’m not!” Lindsay exclaimed at once.

“Lindsay, you have to,” Jill demanded.

“I do not have to,” Lindsay shook her head. “There’s nothin’ to say.”

“Uh, yeah. There definitely is,” Jill amended.

“And what exactly would that be?” Lindsay grumpily muttered.

“Cindy,” Jill offered. “I’ve been wondering… are you as good in real life as you are in my dreams?”

For all of her friendly efforts, she was rewarded with such a weighty glare, if she pulled it off Lindsay’s face and stored it in her pocket, it would have pulled her pants down around her ankles.

Lindsay stared at Jill, trying to get the information she needed from Jill’s brain through telepathy, since Jill wasn’t giving her any real verbal advice.

“Bernhardt,” a detached voice from behind spun Lindsay’s head back and she received a serious case of stinkeye from Denise. “When you finish chitchatting, I need to see you.”

Denise disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared, giving some credence to the notion that she was a witch in practice and not just in name.

No longer in quite the good mood she’d been in, Jill gathered up files, and Lindsay knew that they were done for now, which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing. Who knew what else Jill might have witnessed and kept stashed to serve as a humiliating revelation at a later date?

“I cannot believe you saw that,” Lindsay grumbled as Jill got up from her desk.

“I didn’t,” Jill proudly smirked on her way out, pausing in the doorway to call over her shoulder. “Tell her Lindsay.”