TITLE: Anything
AUTHOR: Sugah
SUMMARY: Danny isn't always eager to try new things.
SPOILERS: Can You Hear Me Now (4x01)
PAIRING: Danny/Lindsay, as if you had to ask
RATING: T – There's a lot of innuendo.
DISCLAIMER: I still don't own them. In fact, now that I've moved, I don't own much of anything.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: After watching that scene with the spray condoms, I couldn't not use that in a post-ep. This is my official welcome to season 4, which will be chock-full of D/L goodness. So says I.

Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own.

Anything

Danny Messer walked through the halls of the crime lab like a man on a mission, because he was. And his mission was to hide the can of condom spray from his girlfriend, who was way too enthusiastic about trying that stuff. As such, he was very carefully checking around every corner, making sure that Lindsay was nowhere in sight as he made his way to the locker room. He planned on picking a random locker and sticking the spray can in it, then busting the lock so that no one could open it. Ever.

She didn't seriously expect him to use that stuff, did she? Of course she was eager. She wasn't the one who had to spray it on her…fun parts.

He managed to duck into the locker room unnoticed by Lindsay and was just opening an empty locker when someone clapped a hand on his shoulder, startling him and causing him to drop the spray can. He turned around just in time to see Hawkes stooping to pick it up.

Danny would have given anything to wipe that smug look off Hawkes's face. It would do no good claiming that it wasn't his; there was no one else in the locker room to pin it on, and Hawkes had been in the room with him and Lindsay. They weren't exactly subtle about their relationship. He cleared his throat and held out his hand. "Can I have that back?"

Hawkes smirked and held the can just out of Danny's reach. "Saving this for later?"

Danny rubbed his forehead and squinted his eyes shut in frustration. "No, actually. Making sure Lindsay can't find it."

"I never thought I'd live to see the day that Danny Messer is afraid to try something," Hawkes laughed, still holding the can away from Danny. "This from the guy who ate a live centipede. I find that hard to believe."

"I'm not spraying that on my test tube, all right?" Danny said, his voice rising slightly. He hoped he didn't sound as hysterical as he thought he did.

"Danny," Hawkes said, adopting the placating tone of a doctor trying to reassure a patient, "it's been tested. It's perfectly safe."

"It's not the putting it on I'm worried about," Danny mumbled, although that wasn't entirely true. He felt his face burning and knew that he must be a furious shade of red by now. He silently cursed Lindsay – he never used to blush this much before they started dating, but now almost every time she flashed him that secret smile and what he referred to as her 'sex eyes'… He was getting embarrassed a lot more lately.

And as much as he used to boast about his conquests – before he met Lindsay, anyway – he didn't really want to be having a conversation about his sex life with Hawkes. Hawkes was a doctor and had a tendency to lecture Danny about the perils of unprotected sex. Like Danny needed lecturing – the neighborhood in the Bronx in which he grew up was littered with unwed teenage mothers. Danny, thankfully, had never experienced a pregnancy scare, but some of his friends were not so lucky, and he was smart enough to learn from their mistakes.

Hawkes was staring at him curiously, one eyebrow cocked in silent expectation.

Danny pursed his lips and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's the taking it off."

If Hawkes responded, it was difficult to make out through the fit of laughter that suddenly had him doubled over and clutching his side. Feeling the need to explain himself, and practically shouting to be heard over the laughing, Danny continued. "You saw how that looked on our vic's skin! It looked like some sort of skin disease! I'm not too coherent after… afterwards, so knowing me I'd look down, forget what it was, freak out, and not realize what was going on until after one humiliating trip to the ER!"

Hawkes took a few deep breaths to calm down, but he was still chuckling when he said, "I think you're exaggerating just a bit. And if you're so uncomfortable about using it, why not just tell Lindsay?"

This was something Danny was never going to live down, so he figured he might as well just twist the knife a little deeper and get it over with. "She's so excited about it. I don't want to disappoint her."

Hawkes's face suddenly sobered, and he stopped laughing. The smile he gave Danny was one of awe, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "You really care about her, don't you?"

Danny pulled his head back in surprise. He found it hard to believe that it wasn't completely obvious to the entire lab just how he felt about Lindsay. He worked with trained investigators, after all. Hell, they could probably tell from space. "I'm crazy about her."

"Then why don't I take this," Hawkes said, tucking the spray can into his back pocket.

A huge weight lifted off of Danny's shoulders. He gave a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Doc."

Hawkes shrugged one shoulder. "Don't mention it," he said, making his way out of the room. "Maybe Adam wants it."

"I did not need to hear that!" Danny called after him. The door swung shut, and Hawkes disappeared from view. Danny rolled his head, working out the kinks in his neck, and plodded over to his own locker. It had been a long day, and he was looking forward to going home and soaking in a nice warm bath. Hopefully, Lindsay would join him. He had never done anything like that with his previous girlfriends, but he found he quite enjoyed it. He and Lindsay had already slept together, yes, but there was something obscenely intimate about bathing with her that made his head spin just from the thought.

He collapsed onto the bench and clenched the fingers on his left hand. He was sure that repelling down the Statue of Liberty had aggravated them, but it wasn't often that you got the opportunity to do that, so he had jumped at the chance. Now he was regretting it. He pulled his rehab ball out of his pocket and started squeezing; he tended to do that instead of taking pain pills. He had a scare back in college, when he broke his wrist. He didn't want that to happen again. And the squeezing was good for stress as well as his fingers.

He felt Lindsay coming before she spoke. He had an innate ability to sense her presence. He noticed it a while ago – sometimes he could feel her eyes on him. With anyone else, it would creep him out a bit, but he liked the idea that she just couldn't keep her eyes off of him. Right now, she was watching him wince as he squished the tiny red ball in his hand.

"Hey, tough guy," she murmured. She settled on the bench beside him and gently laid her hand on his knee.

"Hey," he returned, draping his arm across her shoulders and placing a light kiss on the top of her head. She nestled into his embrace, sighing contentedly. "Man, this case was something else, huh? Blood on the Statue of Liberty." He felt her nod against his chest and smiled. "Bet you never saw anything like that back in Montana," he drawled, adopting a hideous country twang.

She laughed and shook her head. "When will you learn, Messer, that we don't talk like that?"

"Yeah, but it's more fun to pretend that you do."

She reached out and ran the tips of her fingers along the back of his hand. He shivered. "Are they bothering you?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. Everyone else seemed to make a bigger deal out of his injury than he thought was necessary – Lindsay especially. He was used to broken bones. Yeah, it had hurt like a bitch, but at least he still had full use of his hand, so he wasn't going to complain. "A bit. It was worse earlier – I think it's from clutching the rope."

"I know what will make you feel better," Lindsay whispered in his ear, and the abrupt change in her tone made him shiver again. She softly kissed the spot just under his ear, and he had to bite back a moan. "Do you still have that little present I gave you?"

He tried not to tense or react in any way. She had gotten quite adept at reading him over the last few months. "What present?"

She clucked her tongue and lightly blew on the shell of his ear. "Don't play coy with me. You're not good at it." Danny adopted his best clueless look and raised his eyebrows. She slapped his shoulder. "Danny! The condom spray! Don't you remember?"

Danny screwed up his face in what he hoped was a puzzled expression and said, "No?"

She rolled her eyes. "I was hoping we could…try it out tonight."

He squirmed. Just the thought of spraying that on his… There was no way something like that could catch… "Linds, I don't think that's such a good idea."

Lindsay furrowed her brow. "Why not?"

He opened and closed his mouth several times, willing his vocal chords to work. However, it was his brain that was the problem, as he wasn't about to confess to Lindsay that he was afraid of an aerosol can. It was German-manufactured, and they had a much higher tolerance for pain. So he said the first thing that popped into his traitorous mind. "I'm worried about you."

"Me?"

His brain worked feverishly to come up with a way to support that, and he remembered his earlier train of thought. "There's no way that's an effective contraceptive."

She laughed and shook her head. "Yeah, not buying that. You know that's not the only method of birth control I use, and I trust you would tell me if you had any…conditions I needed to know about. So what's really bothering you?"

He dropped his eyes to his lap, then looked up to meet Lindsay's gaze. "I just don't feel comfortable about it."

Her eyes softened, and she smiled. "If you really feel that strongly…"

"I do," Danny said, nodding emphatically, and feeling like a bobblehead.

"Okay then," Lindsay said. "It's a shame, though. I had something special planned for tonight."

"Special?" His voice cracked on the word.

She nodded. "I figured, since you were going to try out something I wanted… I would try out something you wanted."

All of the blood rushed from Danny's brain to his groin in a matter of seconds. A dozen different fantasies were in his head in a flash; things he had always wanted to try with Lindsay but didn't want to suggest. She was pretty daring in bed, but he didn't want to push her into doing something that might make her uncomfortable. But he'd always had this fantasy about the showers in the locker room…

"Anything?" he asked, dropping his voice an octave and watching the change ripple through her.

She did her best to look calm, but he could see her pupils dilate. He could almost hear her pulse speed up. "Within reason," she said, and her voice faltered a bit.

Danny slowly let out a breath and considered his phrasing carefully. "Say I were in the mood for a shower. Right now." He glanced up at her, and she cocked an eyebrow. It suddenly felt very warm in the locker room. "And I wanted you to join me. Would that be within reason?"

Lindsay's eyes lit up, but her face remained stoic for a moment before she broke into the most beautiful smile Danny thought he had ever seen. "I think we could work something out."

Danny was standing in seconds. "I'll be right back."

He tore out of the locker room. He had to find Hawkes, and he had to find him now.