AN: I began writing this some time ago. Flack and Stella became my muse - and I was all but finished this when I read that Stella was being written out. It stalled me - but I have decided it is better to finish a piece, no matter what. So here it is - I should say that it is set in the current space and time - spoilers for pretty much everything that has gone before S6, although fairly non-specific ones. Some poetic licence employed, that is the beauty of writing.
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own any of them. You know what wouldn't be happening, and what would, if I did. I borrow and I return unscathed, I hope.
Thanks for reading J
Day One of Year Two.
Flack.
He was thinking of his mother. In her plaid chair by the bay window, looking out at the street coming to life, telling him a truth she thought he didn't know, that was how he thought of her. Liberation, catharsis, damnation, redemption, acquiescence. She seemed to want him to know these words. Like she could know that he would need them, and that she wouldn't be around when he did.
He didn't know what he needed, but he was ginger about it. Something that hadn't quite become a wish or a feeling was under the surface, but it wasn't jostling to get out. He liked to leave things well alone. Part of the cop instinct –with others, dig down deep, but don't waste time on exposition. No-one needs to know you like your coffee white in the morning, black in the afternoon.
His head rolled a little on the headrest – he was tired, and the sun broke weakly over the dash as he waited for the light to change. The radio in the car crackled reassuringly; business as usual. Lazily he allowed his mind to wander further. Last night's after work beer with Danny in a bar near his house. Beads of sweat on his neck when they left, the first warm day in a while. This morning's ride to work and the quiet hour in the precinct that had come about by chance. The low zing of the elevator as it tipped him out in the lab after lunch, and Mac's back to him, looking out over the city while he talked on the phone. Stella.
Stella.
She smoothed her hair back behind her ears, leaning further over the evidence table. The light was bright on the back of her retinas now. Aching a little. She shifted position, sighed. So much still to do, a long afternoon stretching ahead. That familiar roll of the stomach that nothing's wrong but all things aren't right, either. That's Stella talk, Mac would say. A radio played somewhere in another room, but she couldn't pick out the words. She flexed her back to stave off the fatigue and focused anew. Arms of a sweater blurred at the edges on the white table as she searched it again. And again. The job's a gift, but it comes at a price.
The morning replayed, its warmth still on her skin. A long drive in traffic, a hot scene, then a tense arrest, thumbs on holster catches until the cuffs clicked shut. Breathe out. A long round of questioning. The wrong guy. Plenty of evidence, no answers. Yet. A lunch eaten on the run, so to speak, down at the cart on the street below, looking for clarity in fresh air. The midday crowd thronged either side of her and she felt like a rock in a stream. When she returned, Hawkes brought her news of the autopsy, providing a little context. She thanked him, and wondered if she'd had a brother whether he could have made her feel as warm as Sheldon's lovely smile did. Since then she had kept her phone on the table next to her - ring, dammit, ring - because she was getting the fire in the belly now - the need to close.
She barely looked up as Mac passed, the swish of his crisply pressed jacket so comforting. They don't need to look at each other to be engaged. Back in his office, he picked up the phone, which must have been ringing, but she couldn't hear it.
"Hey," Flack.
She turned, hopeful. He came bearing good news, she could tell. His smile was infectious, and he didn't hesitate - a lead, an address, did she want to go with. Did she ever. He swung back out of the room, reaching out and unhooking her jacket on his way. He threw it to her, one smooth motion, and they didn't even check their strides. She wouldn't need it, but she took it anyway.
Flack's driving had improved. She liked to think that her once growling 'drive nice!' as he cornered rather too quickly, had sunk in. That or he was getting old. She looked over as he palmed the wheel round several turns and gave their location over the radio at the same time. Angell's death still clung to the lines on his face.
It made her wonder what she'd looked like to those who knew better after Frankie. Once the obvious scars had healed. When she was left with only her private demons, the bile in her throat at the sight of her own bathtub, a lifelong womanly ritual now ruined. She showers now, and it took her a long time to do so without the door open, and her gun on the edge of the sink. Longer than she'd say.
Flack's demons were different. She was smart enough to know that she couldn't help him simply by being someone else to whom a bad thing had happened. She wouldn't belittle him like this. He was beset by helplessness and, she suspected, somewhat stripped of himself by having been unable to save her. What he did the job for every day for years, and he couldn't protect her. He was smart enough to know this wasn't his fault, but that truth was probably weak in the small hours of the months of empty nights that had passed since her death.
Stella looked over at his profile as he peered over a line of traffic, his finger dancing over the switch for the bluesandreds. She wondered if he thought Angell was the one. He pulled out of the line of cars, flicking the switch at the same time, and the surging motion left Stella's stomach behind for a second. He glanced over, waiting for a reprimand, but she was with him, her arm along the window of the car, not white knuckled but cool. No matter how many years on the job, there was still something about screaming down a crowded street in a police car that set her nerves on fire. Flack was focused on the road, weaving in and out. Stella leaned into the back for their vests, just in case. Some things never got old.
They tore past the building where Angell had been shot. Flack looked, and Stella followed his gaze, before they were back in the chase, focused on the road ahead.
"Almost a year," he said, and it took her a moment to work out what he meant.
They had gotten their man. Stella, gun raised, fingers curling and uncurling around the butt, waited, counting silently, mouthing two, three, four. Flack, opposite, eyes trained on her, nodded on four, and swung around the door jamb, popping it off its hinges with one shoulder. Stella crashed in, the chaos of identifying themselves and scanning the room and cops streaming past her from behind, guns out, causing her heart to race out of her chest. The guy was in bed, at four in the afternoon, his hair stuck straight up in a shock of fuzz as he was hauled up by officers.
Flack tucked his gun away as the guy was led down to the cop cars below. His chest rose and fell quicker than usual, mirroring the quickening beneath her own vest. We are the job. He nodded to her, circled his shoulder a couple of times and broke a small smile.
"Tell me there's beer at the end of this day," he said, and she smiled, and they followed the officers down the hall to the stairwell, leaving behind them the splintered door, shoved back in the space where it used to hang.
Stella listened to her own footsteps back out on the street. She was haunted a little by the fact that she had walked Angell into danger more than once in the months leading up to her death. In harm's way, asking more of her than the job did, and Angell had gone willingly. Seeing Flack's face the day she died, would she have done that if she'd known? Things had been so precarious, and she had been cluelessly adding to the likelihood that something would go wrong. She tried not to think about the fact that she'd done that before, letting Frankie into her life, not getting the force involved even once he'd started to get weird. She hadn't seen it as a risk at the time, not until It was too late. She tried not to think about Flack, and how he must feel. She tried not to think about the reasons for his not telling her. She tried not to think about the honest truth - that she might not have wanted to know.