None of these character's are mine ... but I love them all anyway. Follows Child's Play … and the way I thought it would go … should have gone.

Just a little one shot ...

Lindsay found Danny in layout with Hawkes. They stood over the table carefully scrutinizing the lining inside the trousers of the DOA they'd been assigned yesterday. For a moment she just studied the fabric, or rather, Danny's hands as he worked with the fabric.

She curled her hands around the parcel in her hands—Danny's mother's special dish, that she'd carefully wrapped in tissue paper and a shirt box left over from Christmas.

She opened her moth to speak, but her lips trembled. She closed them tight, and for a moment, told herself—all over again—that it was just a mistake.

She hated that it came down to this time, to the point where they were both working, but he wasn't returning her phone calls and he wasn't really … there when they were together. If together counted the hours logged by the NYPD.

She sighed. This was why she should have never gotten involved with someone she worked with.

"Danny?" she said finally and managed a smile as it was Hawkes who looked over at her. Danny pushed his glasses up and studied the fabric a little more closely.

It wasn't time for this, she reminded herself, but she just couldn't … wonder anymore. She was sick inside.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

He glanced up then, briefly. "I'm a little tied up here right now, Linds."

"I—" she looked at the box in her hands. "I'll just leave this on your desk then."

As she turned and walked off, Hawkes chuckled. "I'm guessing that was the wrong answer."

"What?" Danny asked, focusing in on Hawkes. "What are you talking about?"

"Lindsay. Something's wrong with her, Dan. You didn't see?"

Danny frowned and set the tailored slacks down, heading toward his office a floor below without bothering to take off his lab coat. He caught up with her as she was turning to leave.

"What's in the package?" he asked, letting the clear door close behind him. With the glass walls, it wasn't a place for conversations, or personal problems, but she knew that as well as he did.

She sighed, but glanced back worriedly at the box—instead, he was sure—of looking at him. There was a distance between them. It worried him.

"Your mother's dish."

"My mother's dish?" he repeated, lifting his brow until he remembered.

Sometime around Thanksgiving, Lindsay had invited his parents over to her little apartment. His mother had brought extra food, as always harping a little on overdrive that Lindsay was too thin. She just needed to eat a little more. So she'd left the dish, with leftovers for Lindsay to eat.

And he remembered sitting there on the Friday after Thanksgiving, after they'd watched a little football. They'd enjoyed his mother's cooking together in the quiet of Lindsay's small apartment. Things had felt so good at that point, so right, just looking at her across the table.

If only he could go back to that moment. Before Reuben ….

"She called this morning, Danny." Lindsay finally looked at him. There was something swirling in her eyes that he couldn't understand. Part hurt, part uncertainty. Part incredulity. "She wanted me to bring it to you so she could get it back."

Danny frowned. Not at the request, but the underlying question that he didn't even know. He stepped over and frowned at the box—a mistake, as Lindsay slipped out.

"Lindsay—" he said, but the door closed behind her.

Danny frowned, and then pulled out his phone. There was another way he was going to figure out what was going on … and as always, he knew who to ask.

A woman who seemed to meddle in the best and worst of ways.

"Ma."

It had been a long day before Danny could catch up with Lindsay again. He'd been able to process the fibers he and Hawkes had discovered on the vic's slacks, but it was going to take them awhile longer to get the results. Lindsay had been out in the field with Mac for most of the day.

He spotted her coming in with Mac and glanced at his watch. Past dinner time.

And Lindsay, Danny thought, with mental roll of eyes at his mother—that she would never see—needed to eat, after all.

"Hey Mac—" he said, walking to meet the two of them. "Thought I'd grab Lindsay and take off for a little dinner break."

"Still no leads."

"Nah—matches up with our bus stop vic, but that's about all we got until the results come back."

Mac looked at Lindsay. "When you get back, see to those samples we pulled from the bathroom. Then head home if nothing comes back. You look beat."

"Mac—"

Danny grabbed her hand and turned her toward the elevators before she could argue.

"Danny—"

"Food, my treat," he punched the down button, still holding onto her hand. "You shouldn't complain, Montana."

"I'm not complaining," she said as he pulled her onto the elevator. "I just … don't want …"

"For this to end?"

They were alone, on the elevator, away from the clear glass that allowed eyes everywhere to see their every move. But it was still a public place, and they were still on the job.

"It's not ending, Montana."

"But…"

He drew in a deep breath and let it out. "My mother—is very sorry. I guess when I didn't bring you home the last couple of times I made it home for dinner, she thought that I … that we … but we're not. At least I'm not."

"I'm not either," she turned, just enough so that she stood in front of him and took his other hand as she looked up with wide eyed hesitation. "I know it's been rough, Danny … and I haven't known if it's been enough or too much for us."

He squeezed her hands. "You're doing fine. We're doing fine."

He had a moment, just a breath of a moment, to lean down and press his forehead to hers, before he stepped back as the elevator doors opened on the first floor.

"Hungry?"

"Starving," Lindsay said.

He chuckled, and glanced back at her with that oh-so-Danny smile. "My mother would be happy to hear that."