Not very many people can say that their lives were dramatically changed by a mere moment. A look or a brush of contact was all it took sometimes to fuse one life to another. Soul-mates – that was the colloquial term for two people who were meant to be merged as one, like the sun and the sky, the sand and the shore. Everyone who's ever experienced such a phenomenon has had a different name for it. My missing half. My perfect match. The light in my eyes and the windows to my soul.
Mine? My term was simple, and yet the name meant so much more than what the surface value offered at first glance. I called him Mac Taylor.
We'd known each other since before we could remember, our age beginning to rob us of particulars. Days, dates and circumstances all merged into one event that was the catalyst, setting our intricate camaraderie into motion. All I can remember is the day he told me he loved me, standing underneath the snow-strewn limbs of a dormant tree in the dead of winter, when everything else around me seemed lifeless and dull and frozen in time.
Mac was always the spark of life in empty spaces; having him in my life was all it took for the fire to want to burn again – a slow heat. A gentle ignition. Every hand that Mac every laid on me was kind, an unspoken gesture of comfort, though his words could inflict the cruelest gashes as he knew just where to strike and how long the affliction would last.
I will always remember that day underneath the early dusk. It was the founding of a new phase of life for me, the prelude to a story that felt like had never even started. Before, our relationship had been constant, but after so long we'd forgotten what it was like to begin again.
Mac gave that to me – a fresh start. I owed him my life and the time would soon come when he would need me most. I never faltered, no matter how hard it became for me to stay by his side. I called it stubborn, the unwillingness to let go when letting go seemed the only thing I could do for him. At first, I will do no harm.
He called it loyalty, and every night, before the end started, he'd nestle into the crook of my neck, breathing the memory of every moment we'd ever had together into me – he wanted me to keep them when the days without him were too much to bear. But someday, he promised, I would have to bury them in the sands of time, let the distance grow between myself and the past – it was present in his hand intertwining with mine. The small constriction; he didn't want to let go either.
If I didn't have you Stella I'd have given up a long time ago.
Those words still haunt me; they were the last I ever heard from him. The last time I let myself drown in those eyes, eyes that bore such strong resemblance to the color of the sea after the end of the storm. His hand was too weak to hold mine, so I held his instead, feeling the aching cold withdraw from him and bury itself into the pit of my stomach. A numb dread. Frostbitten.
I was like the sieve and the sand…no matter how hard I tried to hold onto him, he slipped through my fingers a little more each time.
That was the end. His hand in mine, lacking the strength to give me my last comforts before he had to go. Instead, I filled him with mine.
AN: This is an angsty piece. But I usually feel like I write angst better than I write lighthearted fluff. I might extend this into a full-length because I like the idea. Again, I need to go back and edit this so please disregard any errors. Thanks for reading.
Disclaimer - I don't own Mac Taylor or Stella Bonasera.