Work Text:
I.
Flack wakes up to a giggle.
Lindsay will later deny this, but it’s a high-pitched sound, like something a thirteen year old girl would make while on the phone with her crush. He’s lying on his side, and the light coming through the window is gray and far too bright, but he squints an eye open at the sound, groaning at the morning sun and the percussion band that takes up residence in his head.
The giggling stops. Flack manages to get his eyes open fully, though it takes him a moment to figure out what, exactly, he’s looking at.
Danny and Lindsay are dark figures against the bright backlight of the window, the light turning them pale and silver-skinned. Lindsay is straddling Danny, and he’s got his hands on her waist. She’s naked except for a pair of very familiar dog tags that hang around her neck, dangling in the air, gleaming.
Danny uses the dog tags to pull her down, whispers something in her ear, and she crawls off of him, pulling herself up the bed. She stretches out next to Flack, and then she’s kissing him, slow and lazy.
And that wakes Flack right up, better than coffee. Lindsay shifts closer, and Flack can feel her body flush against his, burning hot, like a fire that he can hold in his arms even with the thin barrier of a blanket between them.
She pulls away with a little grin. "It’s getting late," she reminds them, far too cheerful for six thirty in the morning, and scoots off of the bed before Flack can begin to process her words. She says something about using Flack’s shower, doesn’t wait for permission before she’s sliding into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.
Flack glances over at Danny, whose eyes are still fixed on the door. He mutters something under his breath about Montana kids, barn parties, and lack of hangovers, then turns to look at Flack. An easy smile appears on his face, and he rolls onto his side until he’s face to face with Flack and there’s only a few inches between them.
"Mornin’," he says.
With a grin of his own, Flack mimics the greeting, moving closer until the last few inches between them have all but vanished.
When Lindsay comes out of the bathroom, Flack’s bathrobe wrapped around her still-dripping body, she merely rolls her eyes at the two of them, and mutters something about teenage boys and their ability to make out for hours at a time.
Danny just shoots her a look that says she could very well join them if she wants to do something about it.
II.
Mac walks into the office at 7:30 A.M., the same time as he always does. He has a cup of coffee in one hand (black, two sugars, and the people in the coffee shop across the road know him well enough to have it ready for him when he walks in every morning), the morning paper in the other, and he’s glancing over the headlines as he walks into the lab.
He’s still on his first cup of coffee for the day, and his attention is occupied by the blurb on page three, a double murder in Chinatown that he knows will be a file on his desk.
His desk. He walks into the office, heading straight for his desk. From the door, it’s five steps. He’s taken six, and the desk has yet to make contact with his legs. It takes him three full seconds to realize that his desk is no longer where it always is (two seconds longer than it should have, but he was up late last night finishing the files that he’d taken home when the storm had moved in yesterday).
It takes him a full two seconds more to realize that none of his furniture is where it should be. Instead of the simple arrangement of furniture that he had become accustomed to, there is now a bookshelf and chair where his desk was. Said desk is now off to the right, against the wall, and the chair belonging to it is on to opposite side of the office. The box of files that he had left next to the door is the only thing that’s untouched.
A 50 ml beaker sits on his desk, next to his keyboard. Ever the scientist, he finds a latex glove in a drawer, picks up the beaker. There’s a small amount of liquid at the bottom, but he doesn’t need a Mass Spec to know what it is… the smell is evidence enough.
The lab is still mostly empty, but Mac’s specialty is finger prints, and he doesn’t need a CSI to help him dust the beaker, scan the print in. He runs it against the department database, and a match comes up almost instantly.
Mac stares at the screen for a long moment, sipping his coffee. Finally, he stands, erases his search and rinses the beaker off in the sink.
When Adam comes in a little after 8:30, he finds his entire lab rearranged. The empty bottle of tequila (thrown out before leaving last night, he remembers that much, at least) sits in the dead center of his lab table. He glances up through the glass walls of the lab, finds Mac watching him from across the floor with an unreadable looks, and vows never to get drunk at work ever again.
III.
Adam wakes up to the weak sunlight filtering in through a window somewhere off to his right, and to the smell of old socks and stale alcohol, a taste like three-day-old cabbage in his mouth. There’s a foot somewhere near his neck (and that explains the smell, he manages to conclude), and an arm on his back, and that’s two more limbs than he remembers falling asleep with.
A ghost of hot air on his thigh results in Adam raising his head. He manages to catch sight of Chad curled up on the bed next to him before the anvils in his head start smashing together, and he falls back to the sweet comfort of the mattress, dragging a pillow over his face to block out the light.
There is a sound somewhere behind him, like the noise of exasperation his mother used to make when she walked in to find him still asleep, right before she yelled at him to get up or risk missing his bus. But there’s no yelling, and he hasn’t (thank God, a voice adds) slept in the same house as his mother in almost a decade. Instead, there’s a poke. A finger, a girly finger because none of the guys he knows have nails that long or that pointy, jabs him once, twice in the back of the neck.
Adam groans.
Chad rolls over slightly, mumbles something incoherent, and snuffs lightly.
The poke happens again. This time, the jab is enough to get him to open his eyes. Right in time (as Murphy’s Law dictates) to get a blast of sunshine right in his eye, burning his corneas, as the pillow is yanked off his head.
"Wake up, Ross," a voice says.
Adam rolls over. Kelly stands there, hands on her hips. "How’d you get in?" he asks, voice rough.
"You two were so drunk, you left the front door unlocked." Kelly tilts her head to the side. "You two are gonna be late for work if you don’t get a move on."
Adam groans. Again.
"Also, you shorted me ten bucks last night."
Adam pulls the pillow back over his face and contemplates just lying there for the next few years.
Kelly laughs.
IV.
It’s still bitter cold outside when they emerge from the Crime Lab, shivering in their jackets, walking close enough that their arms brush together. The wind has died down, though, and New York City is slowly coming back to life, the city that never dies, even when the temperature is hovering somewhere in low 20s.
Flack’s apartment is closest, so they head towards the nearest subway station, talking easily about little things, waiting until they’re warm and inside with Flack’s door locked behind them.
When Lindsay slips on an icy patch, Danny and Don wordlessly change positions until they surround her, a Lindsay sandwich with Danny and Flack supporting her.
"Shouldn’t have worn heals today," Lindsay complains.
This comment produces two very ardent protests.
"You kiddin’?" Danny asks, glancing down at her feet, black leather boots with a thin heel, raising her three inches higher off the ground.
Lindsay shrugs. "They’re not the most appropriate thing for a crime scene," she points out.
"So not the point," and it’s Flack’s turn to join the argument.
"You should wear the cute little gray ones more often," Danny adds. This last comment is a total non-sequitur for Lindsay, but Flack nods, wholeheartedly.
Lindsay rolls her eyes and leans a little more heavily on the two men. She makes a mental note to dig out the box of shoes that she never unpacked from Montana.
V.
Lindsay walks into the lab late. Her hair is still damp from the shower, but she caught a cab back to her apartment to get a change of clothes, and she’s not late enough to call the wrath of Mac down on her.
She slips into the lab anyways, glancing around in case Mac or Stella are watching for her tardiness. They’re not, but three sets of eyes are.
Chad and Kelly are perched on a lab table, feet dangling. Adam straddles a chair, next to them. They all wait for her to acknowledge their presence, then applaud simultaneously. Adam has a white board, on which he scribbles an 8/10.
Lindsay blushes and pulls her turtleneck up higher, trying in vain to cover the hickey she knows is visible.
Danny walks in a few minutes later. He’s still wearing the same clothes as he left in. He has a relaxed grin on his face, despite the icy weather outside, and two-day-old beard. The customary chain around his neck is noticeably absent.
He pauses when he catches sight of the three lab techs, still sitting in their lab, watching him through glass walls. His appearance merits polite applause, and a 7.5/10 (though Kelly tacks on an extra point for the fact that he merely grins and heads for the locker room).
Flack walks into the building ten minutes after his shift begins. He has pulled out his leather jacket to wear over his suit, and he has a look on his face that screams "I got laid last night". His eyes fall on the three lab techs, who have reassembled at news of his arrival in order to complete their judging.
Their applause gets a grin and a bow in exchange, and the dog tags that slip out from behind his tie at the movement are enough to warrant a ten on the Adam-scale.
Mac observes all of this from his office. He makes a mental note never to serve tequila at the lab’s Christmas party ever again.
End