DISCLAIMER: Women's Murder Club and its characters are the property of James Patterson, 20th Century Fox Television and ABC. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Defeating Lindsay
By Kristina K
Officially? She hates how that whole deal with Cindy changed her. But if you happen to catch her off guard she might confess that she loves every minute of it and then she'll threaten to kill you if you ever breathe a word of it to anyone. Because, god forbid if anyone finds out that Lindsay Boxer has feelings. Romantic ones. And for Cindy Thomas of all people? She would rather die than admit it. Her formal statement to Claire and Jill was that all that's happening between her and the young reporter is sex. It's casual. No strings attached. It's a fleeting scratch-the-itch deal they made with each other and whoever dares to claim otherwise is blatantly lying. Including Cindy. Especially Cindy.
What she won't be caught dead admitting is how much she grew accustomed to the scent of the redhead's shampoo on her pillow and how incredibly comforting it feels to wake up next to a warm body tangled up in her usually very cold sheets. To admit to that would be like admitting to a complete defeat. A full capitulation in front of her friends, her partner… In front of Tom. That last one pissed her off more than anything else, but she just couldn't bring herself to go against her better judgment. Did she even have any common sense left?
Having Cindy look at her like she always has was driving Lindsay mad. When her big eyes grew even bigger and they lit up with so much wonderment and awe that Lindsay had to look away in pure fear not to catch the 'giddy bug' Cindy was such a proud carrier of? Complete and utter ick. But when she was sure no one would notice, she watched Cindy in pretty much the same way – full of warmth and care and with abundance of hidden desire mixed in.
It was easy cracking jokes when it was the four of them, in the diner, across the table. It was safe. It was a defense mechanism and its serious malfunction started right after Cindy got kidnapped, regardless of how fake the kidnapping was or weren't. After that the whole system went to hell. It was shattered into pieces and it was completely unfixable. She appointed the title of the great protector on herself, and even though it was perfectly normal to be protective of your friends, the level of protectiveness she was so willing to give came as a surprise even to Lindsay herself.
"Very hands on," Cindy noticed jokingly and Lindsay lowered her head bashfully for a moment. They were looking at each other across barely a foot of space, Lindsay leaning against one side of Cindy's apartment's doorjamb, Cindy leaning against the other. "I never thought I was this important to get my own protective detail."
"I'm just being friendly here." The protective mechanism's last proof of life vanished right there at the entrance of Cindy's apartment. Lindsay held Cindy's look one moment too long and then it was no running away from what resulted from that one prolonged look alone.
She wasn't prepared to see just how grown up Cindy actually is. In an instant, the Cindy she knew, the obnoxiously annoying, meddling kid, became a self-assured, sensuous woman who took Lindsay's breath away with only half an effort. And maybe it was the fact that she fought it for so long, but when Lindsay gave in to Cindy's hands, mouth, tongue and exceptionally smooth milky skin, it was clear that, no matter how vigorously she tried to deny it, Lindsay had fallen under Cindy's spell a hell of a long time ago.
Cindy actually made love to her that night, and not like Lindsay later depicted to the wide-eyed twosome the next morning in the middle of the morgue. She called it sex. She called it casual. She named herself the instigator of the impious deed. And the picture she painted gave enough ammo to both Jill and Claire to deem her a dirty old lady who preys on children. "Cradle robber," Jill snickered and didn't stop even after Lindsay threw something potentially biohazardous at her. Later, when it was four of them again and Jill tried so unsuccessfully to hide the impish smile plastered all over her face, Lindsay noticed how guilty she felt for downplaying the importance and the impact of the night spent with Cindy.
"What are these for?" Cindy asked from her doorstep when she answered the door late one night and found inspector Boxer there with a bouquet of flowers.
"I was just passing by this flower stand and I saw these flowers and I remembered how much you like them, so..."
"Just like that?" Cindy smiled with an inquiring squint.
Lindsay squirmed. Busted! "Yeah, just like that."
A few of the other things Lindsay tried to hide were how much she liked the sound of Cindy's voice when it became breathy, when it whispered her name just before she reached the climax and when she moaned, low and throaty as she snuggled deeper into the mass of pillows and covers early in the morning. It wasn't only the physical stuff, like the taste and feel and the sound of Cindy. The vision of her naked body, or the litheness of it... It was that tug on the corner of her lips whenever Cindy swooped in, blurted out something and then stammered on words she tried to push out too fast. It was that same naïveté Lindsay once went out of her way to deride that won her heart over, because with that attitude of hers, Cindy was the bright spot, the eternal optimist, in the dark pit of the world Lindsay found herself living in.
Officially, she was still the tough cop, an unyielding investigator and a workaholic who doesn't have the time or patience for the googly-eyedness. She was the top, she was the actuator of everything, and she could compartmentalize and separate every bit of her personal life from her professional one. Off the record? She was so desperately in love. Just try and get her to admit it.
The End