Bleeding Love
First off, I'm going to ramble for a little bit. This week's episode nearly made me cry and I literally screamed and yelled at my laptop. I officially hate Danny Messer. Sort of. Just this week. Probably for the rest of the season. I think I hate the writers more. This is what they do to the show's best couple two weeks after they come back to work?? Anyway, CSI Files Kristine Huntley (who I deeply despise for always jabbing snide remarks at Lindsay and the whole DL relationship) in her review says that Danny is clearly surprised because he never thought of he and Lindsay's relationship as seriously as her. UGH. Okay. So I'm going to attempt to write it from this point of view. Don't hate me!
Lindsay was hurting. Deeply.
The Danny Messer that she knew, the one she used to be best friends with, the one that she enjoyed working with, the one who she fell in love with, was now completely gone. She'd been seeing pieces of the old Danny Messer keep slipping away, and that day was the day he vanished altogether.
Now, what was left behind was the person the lab techs had warned her to stay away from. The one who couldn't do a long-term relationship and used women merely for pleasure and brushed them off like they were nothing when they expected more.
That was what he made her feel like. One of the old girlfriends that the old Danny Messer had.
"I didn't want to go to lunch yesterday. Why you gotta make such a big deal out of it?"
She was taken back by everything about him. The words, the way he said them. But what hurt her most was what he didn't say with his mouth, but with his eyes. His usually soft and kind eyes that assured her that everything was okay. But what she saw in his were harsh, cold, and foreign.
Half of it made her sad, but the other half made her extremely pissed.
"Don't try and demote me to some clingy, shallow girlfriend who's suffocating you, okay?"
Then she was a loose cannon. Everything that had been building up in her mind that she wanted so badly to say, but were never put into actual speech, were said. How she knew that he was still grieving over Ruben, that she wanted to be there for him, and that he didn't let her. But what she hadn't expected to say was,
"And for the record, I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at myself…because I've fallen in love with you and I have to find a way to let that go."
When she said the last words, "let that go", her voice was already cracking and she was sure that her heart was too.
"Lindsay?" she heard Stella's voice in the bathroom.
"Yeah?" she tried to hide the fact that she'd been crying. "You need me to process more evidence?"
"No. I didn't come here as a boss. I came here as a friend. Something's bugging you. Come on, what is it?" Stella's usually strong voice softened.
Lindsay unlocked the stall and sniffed, "Relationship stuff."
"By relationship stuff, you do mean Danny, right?"
She nodded, "Just the way he's been treating me, you know? Like I'm just his coworker like old times when he can just brush me off and expect me not to feel it, you know?"
Stella nodded, "Yeah…Danny tends not to deal too well with grief with others. He usually deals with things himself."
"That I noticed. Well, I asked him to go out for some lunch this morning and he came up with 'laundry and running to the bank'…and I asked what was wrong and he said that he just didn't want to go to lunch. And that he'd just see me at work," Lindsay's voice faltered a bit. "Then in the office just now, he thought that I was making a big deal about lunch. That was just…the tip of the scale."
"What happened?"
"Pretty much gave the most embarrassing speech of my life…involving grieving alone, trying to help him, and ending with telling him that I loved him but was trying to find a way to let my love for him…go…" she began to cry again, the sobs wracking her body.
"Oh my God," Stella put a comforting arm around Lindsay's shoulder. "He really said that? Danny?"
Lindsay feebly nodded her head, "And you didn't see his reaction. It was like…he didn't even have the slightest idea of my feelings for him. Like I'd just said this out of nowhere…It was like up until then…I didn't exist to him…"
Gosh, how could she have been so stupid? Why hadn't she seen it coming? That sometimes, people just couldn't change? Once a player, always a player.
For the past couple months, after the Second Life case, they had both been drifting apart. Sometimes they wouldn't even see each other for three days. She'd gotten used to the lack of intimacy in their relationship, but after Ruben, she decided that her needs didn't matter as much as his.
He needed someone, and she tried to help him, but now, they were just the same. Before, he was the strong one, and she the survivor who was tormented by the guilt of witnessing and living through a crime. Now, she had to play the part of the strong one and she just didn't know how. She'd spent most of her life as the one who was always being pitied and having to be taken care of.
She just wasn't sure what to do. But she tried, and her efforts failed as he began to push her away. She thought that there had been a relationship between them, but it soon became more and more clear to her that maybe to him, there had never been one at all.
Maybe from the very start, he hadn't even felt anything all that deep for her, that she was probably just a game, a way to keep him entertained. She was just a chase, and when he had her, that was it.
Game over.
Okay, I'm probably going to continue this…and just fill in the gaps of the episode because it's wildly unsatisfying. Review, please!