DISCLAIMER: Nikki & Nora are the property of Nancylee Myatt and Warner Bros. Television. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Originally posted to my LJ years ago as an attempted drabble for Elfcat. Suffice it to say that I exceeded drabble length. Thanks to Debbie for the original beta. All errors made in the way of tweaks and edits are mine and mine alone.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To darandkerry[at]yahoo.com
True Lies
By Ann
Nora pulled a cold compress from her eye and squinted at the bathroom mirror as she inspected the damage to her face. A nervous Nikki stood close by, resisting the urge to nibble on a fingernail.
"How am I going to explain this to Momma? I promised to have lunch with her today." Nora gently pressed the skin under her eye and hissed softly.
"Um, you could say that you ran into a door," Nikki suggested with a half-shrug; the excuse didn't sound convincing even to her own ears.
"You're kidding, right?" Nora gestured to her swollen eye, the surrounding area already turning a nice shade of purple. "Momma's seen a black eye or two in her day. It's obvious that this was caused from someone's fist."
"How about a suspect? You could say that you were hit by someone resisting arrest."
Nora shook her head. "That won't work. She'd ask Bobby about it."
"So, get Bobby to cover for you." Nikki didn't see the problem. Injury by suspect was a perfectly logical excuse.
"Bobby is the worst liar in the world, Nikki. Remember when he borrowed your car and backed into a pole. He tried to tell you that someone hit him from behind."
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that," Nikki said, recalling how Bobbie kept stuttering and how he couldn't make eye contact with her. She turned her mind to other ideas. "Can't you just cancel and reschedule when your eye's had time to heal?"
Nora rolled her eyes at the suggestion. "Momma doesn't take no for an answer. You should know that, too."
"Well then, what are you going to do?" Nikki gave up trying to come up with a reasonable lie and just the thought sent a smile creeping onto her face. "Hey, why don't you just go with the truth, in a manner of speaking?"
"Oh, that's a great idea, Nikki," Nora said, pausing dramatically and then pretending to talk to her mother. "Momma, you're not going to believe this, but the black eye was purely accidentally. You see, Nikki, my partner on the force and in life, was at the height of sexual climax and broke free from the scarf I'd used to tie her to the bedpost. She didn't mean to slug me in the eye when she came, screaming my name to the heavens."
"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Nikki replied, a ghost of a grin forming despite Nora's misinterpretation of her idea. She could just imagine the expression on the older Delaney's face should Nora actually relate her frank analysis of the events leading up to the injury to her mother.
"What did you have in mind then?"
"How about . . . Momma, you know Nikki, my partner on the force? Well, we were engaged in a little one-on-one combat, and she accidentally hit me in the eye."
Nora opened her mouth to once again poopoo on her lover's idea, but the more she thought about it, the better it sounded.
"I think you may be onto something, Nikki. It'd be like a true lie of sorts."
Nikki smiled. "Exactly; it'd be perfect."
"No, I know what'd be perfect." Nora grinned and grabbed Nikki's hand, snatching up her handcuffs from the nightstand as she led her lover to the bed.
Lunch with her momma wasn't for several more hours and, with unyielding steel securing Nikki's wrists to the bedposts, Nora would only have to explain away one black eye.
The End