TITLE: Paper Anniversary (7/?) <—-(You never know how long I might ramble.)
PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy – duh
SUMMARY: Lindsay and Cindy celebrate their anniversary. But which one?
NOTES: The is a sequel to House Arrest… as requested. For Nikky and anyone else who wanted, but was too shy to ask. Couldn’t relegate it to a one-shot though. I love this Lindsay and Cindy too much!
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.

(December 25 – Lindsay’s POV)

She’d succeeded in postponing the opening of gifts so that she could drink in the Christmas-spirited Cindy, who reappeared about halfway through their time at her mom’s house. It seemed Cindy couldn’t stay pouty amidst riotous card games and drunken caroling.

And if she could have just talked Cindy into putting off presents for one more day, everything would have been sunshine and daisies. But Cindy was positively adamant that their Christmas gifts had to be opened on Christmas, which was how Lindsay found herself sinking down in front of the tree, wishing she had planned things differently.

Sitting in the low light of the tree in the otherwise darkened room, Lindsay almost wished that it was too dark for Cindy to see what she was unwrapping. When Cindy finally did pull the paper off and tossed it aside, Lindsay got much the response she was anticipating. A long, silent stare at the box, without any outward reaction.

Almost as if expecting things to change on the inside, Cindy finally snapped back to life and opened the lid, and Lindsay grimaced.

“There’s nothing else inside. It actually is a space heater.”

“Oh…” Cindy breathed. “Okay.”

“You don’t like it.”

“No… It’s great.”

“You said that you always get cold in your office,” Lindsay explained. “I thought that you could use one.”

“I could,” Cindy spoke in monotone. “I could use one. Thanks.”

“Don’t just thank me,” Lindsay coaxed. “Tell me the truth.”

“The truth?” Cindy sat the box on the floor and stood up. As she started pacing back and forth, her bare feet plodding across the floor in front of the tree, Lindsay regretted her prodding. “The truth is I picked up Jill and Claire’s gifts alone on Saturday. Sunday, I wrapped gifts and made cookies… alone. Monday and Tuesday my dinner got cold waiting for you, while your twelve hour work days turned into fifteen, and last night I had to call Jill to help me get ready for our Christmas Eve party, because you were late. And today, I got a space heater.”

“Okay,” Lindsay jumped up too, trying for damage control. “I can see that you are a little upset. Fair enough. But I did get you one more thing.”

And had added it last minute, because the longer she went on with this, the more she realized Cindy was going to blow the gasket that had been so precariously loose all week. She handed Cindy the envelope, stuck between two branches on the tree, and waited as Cindy, paying absolutely no mind to decorum, ripped into the envelope like a crazy woman. She pulled out the slip of paper, stared at it for a moment, and raised her eyes to meet Lindsay’s.

“An IOU?”

The way that she said it, Lindsay was surprised not to find herself two feet backward with pine needles sticking out of her ass.

“Well, yeah,” she said, considerably more nervous than she’d anticipated. “I’ve been incredibly busy, and I didn’t do a bang-up job this year, but I promise I’m going to get you something really great.”

“You’re going to get me something really great?,” Cindy questioned. “You’re going to get me something really great. That’s great.”

It seemed her attempt at smoothing things over had failed as miserably as Lindsay could have expected. “Don’t be mad on Christmas,” she pleaded.

“I’m not mad,” Cindy shook her head, and she didn’t sound mad. She sounded a whole lot worse. She sounded completely crestfallen, as if all of her Christmas dreams had just been crushed beneath the weight of one IOU. “I’m disappointed… I guess. I just… I don’t know,” she sighed, tossing the IOU and its envelope on the floor and moving back over to the tree. “Here.”

She returned to Lindsay with the large package that had sat mocking Lindsay from the back of the tree for about a week, the one with the big note on it that read, “Do not shake me. It will break me.”

“Keep it like this,” Cindy said, handing it to her upright and Lindsay sat down on the couch to unwrap it. She pulled the paper away and let it fall to the floor, carefully setting the display frame upright on the coffee table to look into it.

Apparently Cindy did remember that night of the concert in the park in as much detail as she did, including the conversation that came before the mind-blowing sexcapades.

As the symphony had lulled her into a sense of rather dreamy tranquility and the bottle of wine they were sharing started going to her head, Cindy had lured things out of Lindsay that she never thought she would bother talking about it. Sometimes she feared that Cindy saw her as a singularly-focused person with no interest outside law enforcement, and it wasn’t true. And she really wanted Cindy to know her.

So they had talked about traveling. Cindy had done some. Lindsay never had. Because she always saw it as some kind of reward, something that there would be time for once she’d caught all the bad guys. The problem was, no matter how many bad guys she put away, there were plenty just waiting around to take their places, and she’d found herself so obsessed with them all that she couldn’t just abandon them for a week in Paris.

Cindy was infinitely interested in the fact that she actually wanted to see the world. Cindy had even asked for a list of the twenty-five places she’d go first if she had unlimited funds. So she’d named off the first twenty-five places that came to her mind, because Cindy had asked her to.

And now she could see just how attentive Cindy actually was. Because in the display frame case were twenty-five objects, each one a representation of her top twenty-five dream destinations.

“They actually came from each of the cities,” Cindy, standing just at Lindsay’s shoulder, softly informed her. “See, I decorated the back with all of the stamps and postmarks.”

“It must have taken you forever to get all of this together,” Lindsay whispered in awe.

“It took less than five months… obviously,” Cindy said, sinking down next to Lindsay on the sofa. “I really want to go to all of those places with you, Lindsay, but I thought, until that becomes possible, you could have a little piece of them here. There are a couple of other things under the tree, but this is the important one. Do you like it?”

“I love it,” Lindsay answered honestly. In fact, it was the most thoughtful gift that she’d ever received, which she could only guess made getting an IOU that much more of a slap in the face.

“Good.”

Sneaking a glance at Cindy’s sadly slumped posture, Lindsay’s guilt bubbled over. “Cindy, I…”

“I just want to go to bed, Linds,” Cindy cut her off, and was out of her seat and out of the room before there could be any argument.

Lindsay dropped her head into her hands. When exactly her attempt at gift-giving turned into her singlehandedly destroying Cindy’s Christmas, Lindsay wasn’t sure, but, judging by Cindy’s wounded expression, she had certainly succeeded in doing so.

Time passed and she got to her feet. She moved the frame so that Martha couldn’t knock it over and unplugged the lights on the tree. She made sure the door was locked and everything was turned off, and within minutes, she was sliding into bed next to Cindy.

Cindy’s back was to her, but Lindsay pretended there wasn’t a glaring stop sign on her girlfriend’s back and slid up against her anyway. Arm folding around Cindy’s waist, she pulled her closer. “I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you too,” Cindy whispered.

And that was enough. It had to be. Because there would be no glorious Christmas sex that made the angels sing and Santa blush, a fact that, in the future, Lindsay would refer to as “the unforeseen consequence”.