Disclaimer: All characters are the original creation of the writers and producers of CSI:NY.

A/N: Okay, I guess everyone has a follow-up scene for Ep 5:09 The Box. And this is mine.

Expecting

She sighed as she went to the door. She knew he was on the other side. She had known he would want to finish this. She had just thought – no, hoped – that if she got out quickly enough after their shift that he might take the hint and give her some space.

They still had different ideas about what that meant.

“Hi, Danny.” She opened the door and turned away, thinking he would follow.

“What did you mean?”

She swung back with a puzzled frown. “Sorry?”

“What did you mean when you said you know me? That you didn’t expect anything from me?” He remained in the hallway, mouth set stubbornly.

“Danny, come in.” She reached an impatient hand for his arm, and was startled when he grabbed her wrist.

“What did you mean?”

She twisted her hand, trying to pull away, but he just tightened his grip. “I just meant… Look, do you really want to do this out in the hallway?”

She hissed the words under her breath as her neighbour across the hall opened the door, peering into the hall short-sightedly.

“Miss Monroe? Is everything all right? Is this young man causing you any trouble?”

Lindsay glared at the hand on her wrist, then smiled at the valiant old woman, “No, Mrs. Leibowitz, it’s fine. Everything is fine. Thank you.”

Danny did not even glance over his shoulder, his eyes boring into Lindsay’s puzzled and frustrated ones.

“Danny, you’re hurting me.” She hated that her voice broke, hated that her hand shook.

His hand loosened instantly, dropping to his side where it tightened again into a white-knuckled fist.

Lindsay rubbed her wrist gently, trying to smooth away the bruises she knew would be already developing under the skin. Then she reached out to touch his shoulder, to coax him in over the threshold.

“Come in. You have something to say. Let’s get this over with.”

She led the way into her living room, sitting heavily down on the couch. He stood uneasily by the door, rocking back and forth on his feet, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched defensively in a way she recognized. She swallowed hard. So it was going to be like that, was it?

She curled into the corner of the couch, barricading herself from him with feet tucked under her, arms crossed around her. “Say what you need to, Danny. It’s been a long day.”

“I know you. I’m not expecting anything from you.” He quoted her words from the day before back at her, his voice flat and cold.

She nodded. “I meant it. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, I just hadn’t decided yet what to … how to… I needed some time to work things out.” She swallowed hard again. She wasn’t worried about crying in front of him. She would rather not throw up in front of him again.

“I know you too, you know.”

She just nodded. She thought it would be best to just let him say what he had to and leave. To let him do what he needed to, so she could get on with what she needed to do.

“I know this isn’t the way you’d planned things. I know this isn’t how you think. You deal with things as they happen, but you always know what is going to happen.”

She closed her eyes. She still wasn’t sure how this had happened – how she could have made this mistake. She remembered that night: how the Taxi Killer had had the city in a panic, how she had walked in the rain, how Danny had called her, how she had hung up.

And then how she had walked the remaining few blocks to his house and taken him to bed without a word spoken.

Or a precaution taken.

“I know you aren’t impulsive. Not like me. You think, you plan, you work things out. I know you.” His voice was thready now and tight, as if he was forcing the words out through a body too tense to take in enough air.

“And I have to know, Lindsay. I have to hear it from you.” He moved across the room to crouch in front of her, to take her hands, gently this time, in his, to wrap his long cold fingers in her warm ones. “Why aren’t you expecting anything from me?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, too shocked to answer him.

“I know I’m not exactly a poster child for responsibility. But I am the father, yeah? I mean, we’re in this together, right?”

She found herself nodding bemusedly. Somehow the script she had written in her head for this conversation had been thrown out, and she was not sure where things were going next.

“So, if you’re – if we’re – expecting a baby,” his face went soft and one hand crept tentatively towards her stomach, “Well, I mean – why aren’t you expecting anything from me?”

She was shocked by the pain in his eyes when he looked up at her, by the anticipation of rejection clearly written. She could feel the words stumble in her mouth, “I just meant… I mean, I didn’t think… we hadn’t… Danny, I never meant for this to happen.”

“I know you didn’t, Linds. I know. But now it has, right? And we have some decisions to make.” There was a flickering hope now under the certainty.

“Like what?” She wanted to say, “I’m keeping the baby.” But she was pretty sure he knew that all ready.

“Like do you want to get married now, or after he’s born?” That stubborn look she knew so well was back, and his hands were tangled back in hers again.

She pushed him away, her heart pounding, and stood up so quickly he had to catch his balance. She put a hand to her head as the room swung around her dizzily.

“Lindsay!” He jumped to his feet in alarm as she pushed past him, then stood, feeling useless, outside the hastily slammed bathroom door, listening to her vomit repeatedly for the second time in as many days.

He sighed and walked to her tiny kitchen, opening the fridge and looking for something to wash the taste out of her mouth. His mother had always – ah, there it was. He poured a glass of apple juice and went back to stand outside the bathroom door, one hand laid flat against it.

His heart twisted when he heard the vomiting stop and the strangled sobbing begin.

“Lindsay? I’m coming in.”

She hadn’t locked the door, and he ignored her automatic denial.

He handed her the glass of apple juice and sat on the tiled floor beside her, gesturing sternly at her to drink up, handing her some rolled up toilet paper to wipe the tears from her eyes. When she had swallowed what she could, he set it down, and dropped his head against the wall.

“So I’ve never asked someone to marry me before, and I ain’t sure that’s the reaction I was looking for.”

She smiled at the dry tone, then closed her eyes and concentrated on keeping her stomach from tossing his gift of apple juice back on him as well.

“I’m not going to marry you, Danny.” Her voice was restrained and quiet and unbearably weary.

He sighed. “Why not?”

“Because you’d be marrying me for the baby. It wouldn’t work. It doesn’t.”

“It can if the people love each other.”

She swallowed the tears that clogged her throat.

He said a little more insistently, “You said you loved me.”

She held her breath and stood up, holding onto the wall. “Yes,” she agreed distantly, “I did.”

“Wait – you did say it or you did love me?” He grabbed the hand nearest him, and scrambled to his feet as well.

“I did say it.”

“So?”

“And you … didn’t.”

She walked out of the small room when he looked down at his feet, rocking from heel to toe in that way he did when he was thinking.

He found her curled up on her bed, the room dark, a pillow hugged tightly to her belly.

He sat down heavily behind her, his hand going automatically to stroke her back. “I didn’t say it, Lindsay. I know. But would you have believed me if I had? Said it then, I mean – the first time you told me? Or even the second? And then – then – you didn’t say it again.”

“I won’t believe it now either.” She said it with a patient weariness that tore at him. “And I’m not getting married to you out of some mis-placed sense of Catholic guilt.”

Danny lay down behind her, his arm pulling her in tight against his body, now warm and infinitely comforting. “Okay. I get that. I do. So marry me for the sex instead.”

The giggle surprised even her. “I’m pretty sure that’s what got us into this mess.” The yawn rolled through her body before she could stop it, and she could feel her eyelids closing in spite of herself. “I’m sorry, Danny. I’m just … so … tired.”

“S’kay. We’ll figure it out all later.” Danny stroked her hair, tucking her more closely against him, then stretched his hand protectively, curving it over the warm skin under which held the miraculous world. “We have time. But trust me, Miss Monroe,” he whispered. “We are going to be a family. However you want to do it.”