'Deep Skin'

Right. So... I'd like to throw a Stella/Eve/Case story out there, because I love cases and I suppose I quite like Steve too... ;) Rating of... 15 at the moment, but this might go up. Need to do a little shifting of plot here, because the writers did another classic wtd "plot-drop" (think Spence cliffhanger and very sudden resolution beginning of series 6). So, although this takes place the day after 'Skin' ended, I'd like to suggest that Stella might have contracted HIV, and that Boyd is still pretty grumpy with her.

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine but I'll have them back by midnight. Got a flashback at the start which you should recognise – it's lifted and 'prose-ified' directly from the episode. Also, the quote is from Sappho – as it says.

Enjoy.

"When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over."

Sappho

Chapter ONE – This is a body...

"He probably doesn't even have it, he was just trying to freak you out."

"I've got no way of knowing."

"It's so unlikely, especially with the AIDS virus." Eve was just going through the motions; saying what someone should probably say when something like this had just happened. She had washed Stella's hands, held them under the warm water, intertwined their fingers – bare skin meeting latex gloves. The blood staining Stella – marking her otherwise perfect hands had long gone, but Eve had kept washing them, gently, trying to wash the fear away as best she could.

"How long before I know?"

"It's standard procedure. You need to go down to the hospital and get a blood test..."

The door hissed. Eve knew by Stella's face that Boyd was standing there before she even heard his voice. She didn't bother looking at him. Unless he was planning to comfort her Stella, to absolve her of what she had done – because he had done worse so many times before, she would not accept a single thing he said.

"Is there any broken skin?" He asked, flatly.

"No." Said Eve, saving Stella the trouble of having to talk – though a small sound came from her lips anyway.

"What the hell did you were think you were doing." It wasn't a question. It was a demand, and Eve tightened her hold on Stella's hand, which she could feel shaking, ever so slightly.

"I'm sorry, he..." Stella choked out some words, Boyd's face didn't move an inch.

"Sorry doesn't do it. What you did was completely unacceptable." He didn't say any more, just walked out. Stella managed to wait a second after he had gone out of earshot, before the tears came and her hands shook some more. Eve felt something within her tremble, something that made her feel so small, so insignificant, so desperate.

"Hey hey hey... come here..." She pulled Stella close, allowed Stella to latch onto her, to feel a comforting warm body next to her own. Eve held Stella as close as she could, only wishing she could bring her even closer. "It's going to be alright..."

"Sign here." Said the guy who had brought the body, waving a clipboard underneath Eve's nose and holding a pen out to her. Eve blinked at it for a second, before signing her name.

"Thanks," she said, using the word to help clear her throat. "Just on there, thanks." She indicated to the examining table, where the thick black body bag was carted to, placed on, and left for her to deal with. The two men left, and Eve glanced over at the bag. She couldn't even muster up a shard of excitement at the prospect of a fresh new look at an far-from-fresh old body. Her mind kept flying back to last night, to Stella, and back to last night again.

"Let me take you home." Eve had offered, gently. She could see that Stella was about to say no – regardless of whether she wanted to or not. "Please," she said quickly. "I want to."

Stella had nodded, finally, and allowed Eve to take her home. She hadn't said much, and Eve wasn't about to push her. She couldn't imagine what was going through Stella's head right now, what thoughts were drumming against her skull; taunting, testing, serving up a hundred different scenarios. The waiting... must be awful.

Eve had followed Stella into her flat. An invitation hadn't been given, but Stella hadn't told her to go either – she had just thanked Eve for taking her home and left her door open for Eve to enter if she so wished.

"Who's this?" Eve had asked, picking up a photograph of Stella and a blonde girl on a beach somewhere. The photograph looked maybe five, eight years old. Stella's hair was longer, the image was slightly faded behind the glass in the frame from too long in the sunlight. Stella had glanced over Eve's shoulder, standing so near to Eve that she should have felt Eve's warmth – but Stella couldn't really feel much of anything at the moment.

"An ex." Said Stella, by way of explanation. Eve flicked her eyes to the other woman in the photo. Truth be told she had been looking at Stella, but now she looked closely at the other woman for the first time. Stella's ex.

"She's beautiful." Said Eve. It sounded like a basic thing to say, but it was true – she was.

"Her name was Simone." Stella sighed. "I found out two years ago that she died. Cancer." She added, looking at the photo but with her eyes fixed on the frame, not on the people in it. "She lived in France. I had moved here. I didn't know until a friend told me."

"I'm sorry..." Said Eve, putting the photograph down quickly – in case she had disturbed something – and turning to Stella. They were standing very close to each other. They always were.

"I am very... very scared, Eve" whispered Stella. Her eyes were still in the direction of the photograph, but now they did seem to be looking directly at Simone, as if the still image of someone lost was a stimulus for life, for death, for everything.

Eve reached out. She couldn't help it. Stella seemed so frail, so broken. For the second time that day, Eve pulled Stella close, and tried to make comforting sounds to a quietly crying Stella.

Eve snapped out of it. She had to focus on the body. It had been five minutes and she hadn't even opened the bag. She unzipped it, carefully folded back the plastic, and looked at the sorry state in front of her. Face mutilated, skin completely damaged after floating in the river Thames for a week, and the usual decomposition after three years in a grave.

Eve read the original coroner's report over and over, willing for the words to stay in. It wasn't really working, but that wasn't the point. She gave up, moving over to the small box of evidence that had come with the body. A wallet with driver's license – not that it was much use with a missing face – clothes, shoes, a bracelet. Usual items.

Before she knew what she was doing, Eve gently kissed Stella's hair, stroking the back of her neck, holding her close. The crying slowed. Eve kept holding her, kept kissing her. Their lips somehow moved – of their own accord because it wasn't intentional – and Eve felt Stella's mouth on her own, her lips were cold and vaguely salty; Eve could taste tears as she kissed back. Maybe afterwards she would have thought there to be hundreds of thoughts rushing through her head – should I, should we, am I – but there weren't. Not a single one.

It was an automatic reaction, once the kiss had started so had the hands, gently, tentatively exploring – Stella's hands under Eve's shirt and caressing the small of her back, Eve's softly sliding up Stella's sides. The skin. So soft under their fingertips, the feel of another living breathing human body like nothing else in the world.

Eve placed her hands firmly on the edge of the table in front to steady herself. She couldn't stop it, couldn't help it, couldn't make it go away so that she could just think for one moment.

Eve's shirt had slipped off, fallen away just like that; Stella's own jumper soon disappearing too. How did they get there, how did they end up in that moment? Their bare arms brushed against each others, naked skin on naked skin, chests rising and falling with perfectly in-sync breaths. They were pressed deeper into each other now – now they could feel the pressure of the other's body on every part of their own. Eve, or maybe it had been Stella, gasped quietly – or maybe it was even a moan – they weren't quite sure, but all of a sudden Stella had broken away and stepped back very, very quickly.

"No," she had said, voice thin, cheeks flushed, heart thumping. "We don't know yet, if..." She trailed off. If what? If she had it? Eve swallowed. No, they didn't know. But what had scared Eve more than that, is that she wasn't sure if she even cared.

- - -

The hiss of the door made Eve jump, and she leapt back from the table she had been using to support herself. She probably looked extremely guilty, but finding her eyes latched onto Stella's as the French girl walked quickly into the lab pulling on a white lab coat made Eve forget what she was supposed to say.

"Hey..." She managed, though the words sounded foreign and not quite her own.

"Hi." Came the hurried response.

"We should talk." Garbled Eve, quickly. Stella nodded sharply, and made to open her mouth but was interrupted by the rest of the team coming noisily into the lab. Boyd and Grace were bickering, Spence was trying to get a word in. None of them noticed Stella's cheeks go pink, or that Eve dropped her pen onto the floor. She stooped to pick it up and to try and clear her vision of Stella – but the girl was embedded into Eve's memory anyway, regardless of whether she was actually visible or not. Popping back up again, Eve found the team already gathered around the table, looking at her expectantly.

"Erm. Right." She started. "This is a body." She said, simply, trying to stall for time with the obvious while she set her mind back on track. "Buried under the name and always assumed to be Helga Kuhse, German exchange student, eighteen years old, went missing June '05." She stopped for breath. Boyd wasn't looking at her. He was looking directly at Stella.

"Have you gotten the test results yet?" Asked Boyd, his voice low. Stella blinked, like a deer caught in headlights.

"Boyd..." Warned Grace, but he ignored her – showed no sign of even hearing her. Just kept looking at Stella.

"No. I don't know yet." Replied Stella, clearly as possible.

Boyd didn't reply either way, just looked back at Eve for her to continue, but she had totally lost whatever it was she had been saying. Thankfully, Spence unwittingly came to the rescue, looking down at the file in his hands.

"She washed up around docklands after a week – near the Cutty Sark." He looked down at the body. "She had id on her."

"Right, yes," said Eve, picking up where Spence left off. "Her face was mutilated, so a positive identification could never be made, but because of the driver's license in..." She leaned over to the other table, and waved the relevant plastic evidence bag, "... this wallet, the area, the time frame, it was always assumed to be Helga Kuhse. Parents were dead, no relatives, no friends. She was buried and that was the end of it."

"Until now." Said Boyd, stoically. "What's the problem?"

"Helga Kuhse walked into a police station in Hammersmith two days ago."

"So it's not her then." Commented Spence. Eve shook her head.

"How do we know it's her this time?" Asked Boyd, after a moment's pause to digest the information.

"Well, she gave information that only the real Helga Kuhse could have given. She said she had been involved with some rich sleezey bloke who had been commiting tax fraud." Boyd raised an eyebrow, Eve shrugged. "They just rang me up about a body, that's all."

"What was the cause of death, Eve?" Asked Grace, looking up from the original case summary she had been engrossed in.

"Coroner's report said strangulation, I'll run my own tests though."

"And the face was mutilated?" Prompted Grace.

"Mm, after death. Pounded and stabbed by the sounds of it. With decomp as it is I'll probably try to remove the remaining face tissue and take a look at the skull damage underneath."

Boyd nodded, and gave his orders. "You have fun with that. Grace, find this Kuhse woman, talk to her. Spence, original case files, what was this girl-" he jabbed a finger at the body, "-doing with Helga whatsit's drivers license." He made to go.

"What about me?" Asked Stella quickly. Boyd shrugged.

"Make yourself useful."

He left, Spence and Grace also on their way out. Stella pressed her lips together, frustrated.

Eve waited until the others had gone, before stepping forward and laying a hand on Stella's arm. Stella flinched in response, as if Eve had given her an electric shock.

"We need to talk, Stella."

"I have to search missing persons."

Eve, fighting every urge to lean forward and kiss her again, managed a nod. If Stella didn't want to talk now, she wasn't about to make things worse. There was probably a fair bit on Stella's mind after all.

Stella left, Eve finding it difficult not to watch her go. Alone in the lab once again, Eve leant against the table behind her, closed her eyes, and gave in to the temptations – letting her mind pull her back to last night.

"But stay with me? Please..." Stella had pleaded. Eve had nodded, over and over, as if the first nod was never enough.

"Of course."

Eve had lain beside Stella through the night, feeling blissfully comfortable one minute and hopelessly awkward the next, focusing all her energy into stroking Stella's arm gently when she heard the crying, and watching Stella's sleeping form when there was silence. In the morning she had woken up after Stella, had showered and left early to get to work via her own place for some fresh clothes. Apart from offering coffee and an almost inaudible 'thank you' just before Eve left, Stella had barely said a word.

Eve drummed her fingers on the work surface, letting out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding, and settled into work.