dainty aphrodite, acid artemis. (csi: new york)
angst, mac pov; mac/stella
Two sides to every coin
--
aphrodite.
"Two sides to every coin," she says, but she's smiling because this is one of her jokes. You smile because it's good to see her happy, but you don't really get the joke. Doesn't matter. Stella's humour is beyond most of New York, too much for you to handle on an average day, let alone after working a double shift.
There are days – and they're so hard to come by – there are days when she shines as bright as the stars she is named for, days when she is wholly alive, embracing you in her energy and her laughter. There are days when you have to run to keep up with her as she flies from one subject to another and then further still, until you're lost, so completely lost with nothing to lead you on but her winning smile.
--
et.
There's a middle ground, a gaze of impasse, and it's as rare to you as her touch on your face but it means that a storm is brewing where once there were calm waters; a wave of turmoil where once there was relative peace. She is the lighthouse flashing despondency like a torch beam through the night but you approach anyway because you never did know how to read the signs.
--
artemis.
The fury, when it comes, is cold, not fiery as people always suspect it to be. It is cool like the barrel of a gun pressed into the nape of your neck, solid and so very real; she's wound tight like a primed firing pin, ready to shoot off, to release and do damage, and you think, she was right, she's always right. "Two sides to every coin," you remember, and you think, well, you don't think, you only lash out, because you are both too bitter and too angry to remember that you promised once (thrice) never to do this again.
end.