Lapse
The first person she even bothers to look at in the morning, is always her boss. It's just a quick glance, but contained within that split second, is a conversation of the eyes. Mac looks up just in time to meet her gaze.
And so every morning at a quarter to nine, Stella's world stops moving, and time freezes. Then she sorts her way through the static surrounding her heart and she communicates with him. He tells her where the day will go. He'll look to Lindsay, or Danny, congregating with the other lab techs so that Stella knows who's boss she is for the day. She doesn't work with Mac much anymore.
Today Mac motions at his badge and Stella smiles because that can only mean one thing.
Flack.
Mac turns to Sheldon. Her emotional axis breaks free of its rust and Stella almost loses balance as the world starts turning again. If only for another nine hours.
Eight hours left. She's at the crime scene, Flack at her side, cracking a joke because he's probably already heard that the last couple of nights have been rough on her. And also because this is just who he is, and if it annoyed her at all, she would tell him.
He keeps his eye on her as she goes about plucking at the body and its surroundings. She blows a silken curl out of her eyes, and Flack wants her to talk so he begins:
"You've been acting kind of strange lately."
Stella knows there's no point in lying to him. Either he's already heard from Mac, or Danny. Or maybe he's just grown increasingly observant (no, protective) of her since Frankie. She tilts her head when she narrows the list of possibilities down to one that appears cloudy in her mind. Did she tell Flack about the AIDS scare? Did she ever shed a tear, or some light upon the subject around him? She can't remember. She can't remember much of what's happened in the last couple of weeks at all. Except that there's a blood red ribbon wrapped around her mind, and it's all she can see when she looks at the cut on her wrist.
"I'm just trying to be careful," she replies and drops a piece of glass into an evidence bag because well, she's all about the low-key dramatics.
"You are careful Stella," says Flack.
She feels like snapping at him. Telling him that she's fine, and that she doesn't need to be reassured by some straight-arrow cop, or any of her subordinates. Come to think of it, she can't stand the way Mac Taylor looks at her in the morning these days without seeing a Detective Bonasera who has never been at risk at contracting the disease. Mac doesn't even have the guts to just come out with it and play that old reel of empty reassurances and professional sympathies the same way that the others do. He's scared to take it too far, or that she'll take it too far and try to find a deeper meaning to his pat on her shoulder.
All this. All this comes down to, I really want to snap on Flack.
But then, that's not very low-key at all.
They're down to seven, and Stella is grateful for this.
"We still don't have a motive for Watson," says Flack as they watch Sid process the victim.
"Watson doesn't have an alibi, so we're even for now," she replies.
"That's until he can half-swindle, half-bribe his employees to come up with some company party that he supposedly attended last night between the hours of seven and nine."
"Hm... three-quarters bribery I'd say..."
"Agreed. Maybe two-thousand dollars spending money for the blonde secretary."
Stella giggles like a schoolgirl on purpose. He deserves some kind of reward for his unparalleled ability to make her laugh on the dimmest of days in New York City. Had it been anyone other than Flack with whom she was half-heartedly flirting with, she would have felt cheap and conceited. Thankfully, it was Flack, whom – had he not been three years her junior – would have fit that storybook older-brother-figure that she'd always longed for.
"Stella, would you ever consider just being a cop?" he asks quietly once the faintest shade of pink has faded from his cheeks.
"Me? No, I mean..." she looks him straight in the eyes, "It must be a great job. In fact, just watching you do it makes me wish sometimes that things had happened differently."
"We could be partners."
"We practically are partners, Flack. And I don't think that you would be able to put up with me if you had to see me more than you already do."
He shot her a hurt look and then quickly added, "Yeah. You're right. I was just being polite."
She laughs again, but this time it's an older, more Detective Bonasera chuckle than it is a twelve-years-old-and-in-a-plaid-skirt titter.
"Besides, I'd bet you'd miss the microscope o' yours," Flack goes on, "You know what'd be great? Pocket microscopes."
"Pocket microscopes?"
"Yeah, you could keep 'em-"
"In your pocket?"
"Mhm. Or you know. For your birthday or something. I'd buy you one, and we could put it on a chain."
"You mean, a decorative microscope then, from the Don Flack collection?"
"That's exactly what I mean, Stella."
They laugh together like friends, and then even louder when Sid breaks away those trademark glasses of his and stares down into his own microscope at the very blue powder that will break this case.
"... complete with sterling silver. This beautiful piece can be yours for three easy payments of..." she doesn't have time to finish, she's laughing too hard by then.
Later on, she tries not to think of how practical a pocket microscope would be, or how great it would be instead to have a metaphysical microscope, big enough to slide her heart beneath. Maybe if she magnified things, they would become clearer.
She thinks that she needs to stop taking Flack so seriously. Either that, or hold him to his every word.
Six and a half hours left, Stella's still going strong but then...
Suddenly. He's there. It's him. She glances to Flack, pleading for help, but he's already cracking a joke about the colour of her boss' shirt. In front of him.
"That's hilarious, Don," says Mac, but he smiles a little because even the cheesiest of one liners is brilliant coming from Flack.
Sid passes by, mutters something about the body, just loud enough for Mac to hear. And then he rushes past Stella as well.
"I'd like to see you for a moment," says the M.E. and then he looks from one man to the other, then finally back to Stella, "Whenever you're done here of course."
Before she has the chance to stop him, Sid is gone. And then, as though he can sense some kind of unwanted feeling projected at him, (which is bullshit, because that's just not his thing) Flack leaves as well. He shoots Stella a knowing smile, and she wants to hit him again.
Then Mac.
She glances at the clock and her heart nearly stops. This can't be! She has six and a half hours left until the world is scheduled to stop, but there it goes, slowing its speed with every breath he takes.
"What are you doing here?" she asks.
It's too soon.
"I have something for you," he hands her a file, and she realizes it the one she's been waiting for from his boss in Manhattan.
"Thanks," she says, but she's not grateful at all for his presence, or even the file, not one single bit.
This is all wrong. She feels tired all over, this is too much. There's only two short time slots set aside in her day, chosen carefully so that she can keep her emotions in check. She allows ten minutes a day for Mac Taylor to invade her mind, and for that relentless infection to spread throughout her entire being. It starts out as a little fizzle in her brain, so small, so small (too small, maybe even for a pocket microscope) and then it expands within her, with the width of a negative measure (the kind that can't exist). Still too small for her to examine.
That scares her. She's a scientist. It's her job to examine. It isn't just what she does, "jobs" are for people with families to go home to, for children to raise and people to love. For Stella, there's no distinction between the need for justice for any victim, and coming home to an empty apartment every night. Everything just knits itself together.
Mostly everything.
What she wouldn't give for Peyton to pop out of the ground and solve all of her problems with a possessive kiss. But Peyton's gone, and it's been a lifetime since Frankie, and in that lifetime, Stella has pondered upon her feelings and whether or not they pertain to Mac Taylor. She comes up with an irrational value every time.
There's six hours left until the gap in time when Mac finally gets her attention again. He does so with a farewell and then, much to her dismay, a "I'll see you tonight."
She doesn't understand why she's looking at the clock anymore though, since he's just barged his way into her universe and messed everything up. She can handle Mac. She can handle him for three seconds of instruction and two-hundred and ninety-seven seconds afterwards, set aside for reflection, aftershock, and then recovery. Then again at the end of the night. A moment for her cherished goodbye, then the short ride home, and every now and then, a couple of tears when she reaches her bed and tries to tell herself that, "it's just not meant to be."
Outside of these breaks in time when Stella Bonasera reminds herself that she's human and broken and has it bad for her boss, Mac has no business in her life. If she could only bring herself to tell him that, she wouldn't be against a wall - five hours until she has to face him again left ticking away – trying to put herself together and go see Sid.
Four and a half hours.
"Where have you been," Sid doesn't really ask, he just sort of says it, "I found a break."
She listens intently as he speaks with a kind of enthusiastic drawl that is all his own. When he's finished, she hangs around and watches him work because it will be a few more minutes before Flack comes back from lunch (before Flack realizes that Mac's gone, and that he and Stella aren't going to be getting it on in the interrogation room any time soon) and they can get back to work.
Stella wants to think of anything but Mac, but she decides to compromise with herself because she isn't stupid enough to believe that her heart will agree to give up its temporary reign over her thoughts for the moment. She settles on a fond memory. Something that made her smile a couple of weeks ago during her wordless dialogue with Mac first thing in the morning. Conveniently, it involves Sid.
Some mornings, Mac is just dead. He's tired. He's exhausted. But more than anything, Mac is aware. It's as though the weaker his state of mind becomes, the more alert he is of his thoughts and actions. To Stella it seems so very unfair, that he's best at his job whenever he's ready to drop, but that's the way he is, and it's a good thing for the lab that he has an endless supply of perseverance.
On one such morning, not too long ago, as Stella headed towards him to complete their morning ritual, Mac looked at her with a certain something in his eyes that she would have liked more if her feelings for him were out in the open for him to see.
Desperation.
And it's meant for her. He plead with her that morning, his eyes glistening in the morning light. He pinches the bridge of his nose.
Sid.
Please, please Stella, please just do this for me, just this once. I can't do it this morning Stella, I can't deal with him, you just have to please, is what his raised eyebrows say to her as she passes by.
She smiles, You owe me one.
Thanks Stella.
No problem Mac.
Stella doesn't understand what exactly it is about the coroner that makes Mac so irritable. But then she figures that whatever small, annoying tendencies that Sid may possess (endearing in the eyes of others perhaps) just further disturb the fragile balance of civility between he and Mac. Differences. That's all it is that makes Sid a little too much for Mac after three hours of sleep. It's the only time Mac appears desperate before her. And that hurts because altogether, Mac is a very desperate man.
"You have a beautiful smile my dear," says Sid without a hint of shame, "Beautiful, beauti-"
"Down boy," says Stella but she goes on smiling because without that exact amount of smugness that just seems to roll off of him, the memory would've have been quite as fond.
Her phone interrupts his next comment. It's Flack.
"I have to meet him out front," she says to herself.
It's a five minute drive.
Four hours on the clock.
She doesn't even make it to the car.
This can't be right, Stella tries to open her eyes, but then stops because she's afraid of what she might see.
She doesn't know how many hours are left, and neither does the paramedic. But they both know that her world is slowing prematurely. For Mac Taylor, this means that he's just about to lose the most important person in his life, that he's just about to lose himself again, that he's going to kill that driver whatever his excuse may be. But for Stella, it can only mean one thing when the world stops, and that is why she is no longer afraid. She doesn't need to open her eyes to know that he is there, that it is him that's holding her hand and whispering much more than professional sympathies into her hair. He's saying dangerous things because he's lost his cautious demeanor. He's baring himself out in front of her, because the guy beside him says it may be his last chance.
It isn't. Stella thinks it's time for them to speak with words.
This is what pulls her through.
He comes to her late at night, when he thinks that she's sleeping, and for the first time, her world is no longer her own, and he's trapped in this moment with her. His kiss on her forehead – she'll make sure that it's a feel of what is to come – feels like redemption. The clock in her head disappears, and she readies herself for a brave new world, with no countdown to his face.
The first person she sees the next morning has changed in a way that she's always dreamed of.
fin.
July 2008